An lawyer for Twitter accused Threads of participating in “systematic, willful, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property.”

Stefani Reynolds/AFP by way of Getty Images

disguise caption

toggle caption

Stefani Reynolds/AFP by way of Getty Images

An lawyer for Twitter accused Threads of participating in “systematic, willful, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property.”

Stefani Reynolds/AFP by way of Getty Images

Twitter has threatened to take authorized motion towards Threads, a brand new rival app from Meta that has gained tens of thousands and thousands of customers since its launch on Wednesday.

On the identical day, an lawyer representing Twitter, Alex Spiro, despatched a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg accusing Threads of participating in “systematic, willful, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property.”

The letter, which was first reported by Semafor , accuses Meta of hiring dozens of former Twitter workers with the intention of making a “copycat” platform.

“Twitter intends to strictly enforce its intellectual property rights, and demands that Meta take immediate steps to stop using any Twitter trade secrets or other highly confidential information,” Spiro wrote. “Twitter reserves all rights, including, but not limited to, the right to seek both civil remedies and injunctive relief without further notice.”

Meta Communications Director Andy Stone dismissed the accusations in a Threads submit on Thursday.

“No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee — that’s just not a thing,” he wrote.

Over on Twitter, owner Elon Musk replied to a submit reporting the letter by writing, “Competition is fine, cheating is not.”

Twitter has seen a host of challenges from similar microblogging platforms since Musk first acquired the platform for $44 billion final 12 months. But none have grown as rapidly as Threads, the place, Zuckerberg studies, more than 70 million customers had signed up by Friday morning.

The app’s person interface looks and operates much like Twitter, with buttons to love, reply, repost or quote a thread. But customers have bemoaned the shortage of some basic Twitter options, like hashtags and direct messaging.

Meta responded to NPR’s request for extra info by pointing to Stone’s response on Threads.

Since March, Twitter’s communications team has sent a standard automatic response to emails from the press, containing nothing however a poop emoji.