LOL... to think a few months ago he was deviling ex twitter employees and firing them at will
Twitter appears to be unhappy with the runaway success of Threads, Meta's Twitter alternative that launched last night. Threads has amassed more than 30 million users in under 24 hours, making it the biggest threat to Twitter to date.
According to Semafor, Twitter lawyer Alex Spiro yesterday sent Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg a letter [PDF] accusing Meta of "systemic, willful, and lawful misappropriation of Twitter's trade secrets and other intellectual property."
Twitter claims that Meta hired "dozens" of former Twitter employees that "had and continue to have access to Twitter's trade secrets and other highly confidential information." The company further says that the employees "improperly retained Twitter documents and electronic devices," and that Meta took advantage of this to have those workers develop the "copycat" Threads app on an accelerated timeline.
When Elon Musk took over as CEO of Twitter, he fired thousands of employees who then had to look for work. It is likely that some of those employees transitioned to Meta, but hiring people actively looking for a job is not typically considered poaching.
Twitter's letter says that it plans to "enforce its intellectual property rights," with the company demanding that Meta "take immediate steps to stop using any Twitter trade secrets." Twitter threatens that it reserves the right to seek "civil remedies and injunctive relief" to prevent Meta from using its intellectual property.
Along with claims that Meta poached Twitter employees to develop Threads, Twitter says that Meta is "expressly prohibited" from scraping Twitter's followers or following data. Twitter is asking Meta to "preserve any documents" that could be relevant to a future dispute, suggesting that Twitter might be planning to file a lawsuit in the future.
Twitter has not gone after other Twitter-like social networks that include Bluesky and Mastodon, but Threads is a newly-launched app that is built off of Instagram, giving it a notable user base from its debut. Mastodon and Bluesky have far fewer users. In February, for example, Mastodon had 1.4 million active users, while Bluesky had 50,000 users at the end of April.
Following Twitter's accusations, Meta's communications director Andy Stone said that no one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee. "That's just not a thing," he wrote.
Article Link: Twitter Accuses Meta of Poaching Employees to Build Threads
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Twitter Accuses Meta of Poaching Employees to Build Threads
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Twitter appears to be unhappy with the runaway success of Threads, Meta's Twitter alternative that launched last night. Threads has amassed more than 30 million users in under 24 hours, making it the biggest threat to Twitter to date.
According to Semafor, Twitter lawyer Alex Spiro yesterday sent Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg a letter [PDF] accusing Meta of "systemic, willful, and lawful misappropriation of Twitter's trade secrets and other intellectual property."
Twitter claims that Meta hired "dozens" of former Twitter employees that "had and continue to have access to Twitter's trade secrets and other highly confidential information." The company further says that the employees "improperly retained Twitter documents and electronic devices," and that Meta took advantage of this to have those workers develop the "copycat" Threads app on an accelerated timeline.
When Elon Musk took over as CEO of Twitter, he fired thousands of employees who then had to look for work. It is likely that some of those employees transitioned to Meta, but hiring people actively looking for a job is not typically considered poaching.
Twitter's letter says that it plans to "enforce its intellectual property rights," with the company demanding that Meta "take immediate steps to stop using any Twitter trade secrets." Twitter threatens that it reserves the right to seek "civil remedies and injunctive relief" to prevent Meta from using its intellectual property.
Along with claims that Meta poached Twitter employees to develop Threads, Twitter says that Meta is "expressly prohibited" from scraping Twitter's followers or following data. Twitter is asking Meta to "preserve any documents" that could be relevant to a future dispute, suggesting that Twitter might be planning to file a lawsuit in the future.
Twitter has not gone after other Twitter-like social networks that include Bluesky and Mastodon, but Threads is a newly-launched app that is built off of Instagram, giving it a notable user base from its debut. Mastodon and Bluesky have far fewer users. In February, for example, Mastodon had 1.4 million active users, while Bluesky had 50,000 users at the end of April.
Following Twitter's accusations, Meta's communications director Andy Stone said that no one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee. "That's just not a thing," he wrote.
Article Link: Twitter Accuses Meta of Poaching Employees to Build Threads
What's wrong if Meta absorbs the terminated employees of Twitter? Elon Musk doesn't have any moral rights to raise this question.
It is why I said my "gut reaction"
Totally not meant to be taken seriously, Meta claims not a single engineer on the Threads team is a former Twitter employee. I suppose that remains to be seen, but if Elon is really accusing Meta of stealing Twitter tech, what about that other app that is for the former guy? it's quite literally a twitter clone... just forked from Mastodon, correct?
Regardless of whether any former Twitter employees were working on Threads, generally I'd think that the parts that are, as you say, difficult, Meta has quite a lot of expertise in even without any magical trade secrets from the competition.
I'm not a programmer, but I'd think the same skill set would be required to run Facebook or Instagram, so I'm not entirely sure why Musk seems to think the only way they could have done this is with Twitter IP.
The fact that it looks similar is really not important, because that equally applies to Mastodon and many others.
I'm kind of enjoying watching Elon getting his knickers in a twist.
"Elon Musk Pledges That Tesla Will Uphold ‘Core Socialist Values’ in China"
Maybe if he pledges the same for Twitter, it can get unbanned in China?
https://www.thedailybeast.com/elon-...re-socialist-values-in-china?via=twitter_page
🤷♂️🤷♂️🤷♂️🤷♂️🤷♂️🤷♂️🤷♂️
Not sure his base is going to like this though.
Nope. not one bit will they.
Elon you genius, I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but poaching employees is perfectly legal. In fact, it's illegal to disallow it. Trade secrets are a different topic, but poaching is a-ok.
Not a fan of Zuck and Threads is a privacy hole where yours goes to die, but at 70 million new users:
https://indieweb.social/@tchambers/110673835761944888
1. Enron is going to lose it more and more on a daily basis. Prob. hourly basis.
2. Twitter is running light speed towards the history bin.
3. Advertisers will have a safe haven to buy ads on.
4. The more advertisers that switch from Twitter to Threads, the faster Twitter will go bankrupt.
5. 🍿
https://indieweb.social/@tchambers/110673835761944888
1. Enron is going to lose it more and more on a daily basis. Prob. hourly basis.
2. Twitter is running light speed towards the history bin.
3. Advertisers will have a safe haven to buy ads on.
4. The more advertisers that switch from Twitter to Threads, the faster Twitter will go bankrupt.
5. 🍿
TheYayAreaLiving 🎗️
Suspended
Crazy to see and believe how humble, laidback, and down-to-earth Elon used to be.
Money and Attention- The root of all evil. ☠️
Money and Attention- The root of all evil. ☠️
Love the "Enron" connection (though it may have been an autocorrect)...
Mute works too.
I've found that the bird app (even at this point) is still usable and preferable to anything Meta as long as you use the mute button early and often.
The accusation is that Meta is using IP (maybe patents?) that belong to twitter. Also, some employees allegedly have electronic devices (physical property) and/or other trade secrets (info) that also belongs to Twitter.
When you see these lawsuits, assume that both parties know exactly what is being disputed (and it likely isn’t the hiring of employees terminated by a competitor).
The whole twitter situation has been portrayed as a disaster in the public square, so this lawsuit will look equally ridiculous regardless of any merit it may have.
When you see these lawsuits, assume that both parties know exactly what is being disputed (and it likely isn’t the hiring of employees terminated by a competitor).
The whole twitter situation has been portrayed as a disaster in the public square, so this lawsuit will look equally ridiculous regardless of any merit it may have.
Meta specifically did not let ex-Twitter employees work on Threads to keep themselves safe. There are no grounds for suing - you can't just sue an idea; they have to prove they used their code, which given Meta hasn't used any ex-Twitter employees, would be pretty hard to do so.
The fact he’s done that and the site still runs (well) is validation that he did the right thing 🤣
I mean, I wouldn't mind watching a cage match between Suckerberg and Musky .... but Twitter really should try Threads first. It not only requires an Instagram account, it's pretty much just Instragram which already evolved to be not its original thang anyway. I don't even understand the point of Threads outside of trying to renew interest in social platforms since they're all dying.
I think part of the giddiness you see from Zuck this past week is that fact that Facebook wasted 36 Billion $ on their VR and metaverse gamble and its a complete failure.
He then had to lay off thousands due to his personal Metaverse screwup and now is loving the press since it helps people for forget about the Metaverse.
He should rename the company again to Thread.
Take it to the nth degree.
It’s the result of completely unregulated capitalism. With some regulation, there would be rich people, but just millionaires not billionaires. Multibillion dollar fortunes shouldn’t even be allowed to happen.
in California, you can’t prevent workers from going to work for a competitor.
Billionaire: Capitalism good!
Capitalism does capitalism.
Billionaire: Not like that!
Capitalism does capitalism.
Billionaire: Not like that!