Twitter Accuses Meta of Poaching Employees to Build Threads

[tobybrut]

I find it funny people are discussing the strengths and weaknesses of any potential lawsuit without knowing a thing about the issues. We have no idea if fired employees were forced to sign NDA’s (common practice) or non-compete clauses when leaving the company. Those are very easy to prosecute if violated. But since we don’t know if any of those exist, I prefer to reserve judgment about any of the legalities. Considering in the tech industry where it‘s almost impossible to not trample over someone else’s patents, lawsuits are quite common and don’t always go the way you’d expect.

Zuck is never the good guy, btw. Neither is anyone else who trafficks in our personal data.

 

[ApplesAreSweet&Sour]

‘Wrongfully terminated’ Lol. Getting rid of those triggered, self entitled children was a great move by Elon. They can push their ideologies on other platforms.

I find it hilarious how the self-proclaimed "pro-business" side of the political spectrum fails to see the mistake in firing droves of employees at a company run by "triggered, self entitled children" when the product that this company sells mainly caters to "triggered, self entitled children" and whatever else you labeled anyone on the left these days.

Why would anyone in their right mind buy a company with the intention of not only replacing and removing most employees but also thinking you can replace every current consumer with another consumer who leans in the opposite direction politically?

When has that ever been done successfully, how would you do it, and why would you do it?

-Twitter is a business and its there to make money for you -Why on Earth do you buy it to perform some sort of political exorcism on it and convert all the "heathens" into aligning with your personal beliefs?

 

[markcres]

When Twitter was a hard-left echo-chamber that ruthlessly censored anyone with different opinions the media and tech journalists loved it. Since Elon cleaned it up the same people lost their minds with rage and now the BBC and others are giving ‘Threads’ maximum publicity. They want another authoritarian echo-chamber. We see you!!

 

[ApplesAreSweet&Sour]

It's barely been active for a day. This is not a runaway success.

There's more than 2 billion active users on Instagram per month. And everyone of these 2billion people is just a few clicks away from hopping on a "new version" of Twitter that has all of the things Elon has put behind a paywall but none of the subscription fees? And this "new Twitter" is owned by the household name, Facebook(Meta)?

I'd be extremely surprised if it's not a massive success.

 

[tobybrut]

Non-competes arent valid in Cali. Guess which state both companies are or were HQd in?

Not really relevant where their headquarters are. They are both multinational corporations with Meta originating from Massachusetts and Twitter being a Nevada Corporation. Because of the scope of the companies, this goes to federal court, not California court. Just remember when Apple and Qualcomm sued each other, it was handled by a federal court and a federal judge despite both being in California (Apple in Cupertino and Qualcomm in San Diego).

All Elon has to do is to sue in one of the 12 federal court districts where he feels he has the best chance of winning. And there’s nothing to stop him from suing in every other country where Meta and Twitter operate.

 

[Powerbooky]

While Twitter is at it, should Apple and others from the Thread Group sue Meta too? Both names sound too similar and both are advertised as a network. 😁🤡

 

[bgillander]

Did Meta really hire them when Meta implemented a hiring freeze and cost cutting plan in September 2022, at least a month before Musk completed his acquisition of Twitter in October 2022 and started mass layoff of employees on November 4, 2022 followed by more layoffs in late Feb. 2023?

Valid point. But since Musk is accusing Meta of poaching employees, it seems also valid to point out exactly how those employees became available in the workforce. That is pretty Bond villain of him to say “how dare you hire these people I unemployed”, even (or especially) if they weren’t hired by Meta.

 

[laptech]

What Musk is doing happens all the time in the business world regardless of what the business is. A company has a mass of layoffs, a competing rival hires the sacked workers, the company does good then the layoff company is angry that the rival is doing better than they are so they start accursing the rival of carrying out all sorts of dirty tricks.

The way Musk is behaving accursing Meta of all sorts of things without a shred of evidence being presented can be summed up by this well know expression 'throw enough mud at the wall and see what sticks'.

 

[samue]

When I go back to Twitter, if feels like walking through a familiar squalor. A slum overrun by wannabe low budget thugs, shallow whores spewing profanities everywhere, dogs defecating everywhere, peddlers making noise here and there, random fights sprouting from the pettiest, low IQ adverts everywhere.

 

[leonremi]

When Twitter was a hard-left echo-chamber that ruthlessly censored anyone with different opinions the media and tech journalists loved it. Since Elon cleaned it up the same people lost their minds with rage and now the BBC and others are giving ‘Threads’ maximum publicity. They want another authoritarian echo-chamber. We see you!!

before dropping this kind of blanket unproved statement, I suggest you :
1/ analyze the Terms of Service of Twitter pre-Musk
2/ and if those don't prove your point ( as i assume will happen), try and find actual examples where Twitter would have not respected those Terms of Services (again, good luck with that. The "Twitter files" were a dud.

 

[Rafagon]

accusing Meta of "systemic, willful, and lawful misappropriation of Twitter's trade secrets and other intellectual property."

Lawful?

 

[oldwatery]

For someone who obviously is very intelligent…Musk sure is a raging idiot! Is this what mega money does to one’s brain? But I for one am breaking out the popcorn … this is hillarious! I hope they both drown in their own soup as they fight each other …nasty nasty men.

 

[WarmWinterHat]

I find it funny people are discussing the strengths and weaknesses of any potential lawsuit without knowing a thing about the issues. We have no idea if fired employees were forced to sign NDA’s (common practice) or non-compete clauses when leaving the company. Those are very easy to prosecute if violated. But since we don’t know if any of those exist, I prefer to reserve judgment about any of the legalities. Considering in the tech industry where it‘s almost impossible to not trample over someone else’s patents, lawsuits are quite common and don’t always go the way you’d expect.

Zuck is never the good guy, btw. Neither is anyone else who trafficks in our personal data.

As it's been said several times, non-compete clauses are illegal in California. Regardless, this lawsuit has about 0.001% chance of amounting to anything other than news headlines.

 

[BlackBun]

Detest both of them and their lack of morals.

 

[burgman]

generally the agreements developers sign include a 2+ year time after employment has terminated where they cannot work on projects that compete with their own product.

While I dont know specifically about twitter , I would be surprised if there wasn't a no competing clause in there

Given the outbursts after mass firings and those that quit, I doubt there are many signed agreements. Maybe more depending on the level of extortion Elon used.

 

[burgman]

I wouldn't have guessed a year ago that I would feel schadenfreude about Facebook copying someone's app. In this case, I'm happy if Threads become wildly successful, since Twitter gave their userbase away, and Musk has no idea how to run a company. He's become a big cry baby.

I think he always was, just hidden behind enablers and suits preTwitter

 

[Reason077]

If Meta systematically poached active Twitter employees, then that's one thing. If they just hired people who had been fired by Twitter, then I'd say that's entirely fair. Denying the right to use their skills at a competitor would be pretty unfair on those employees.

 

[gwhizkids]

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.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1677042708756439041

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

"Runaway success"? I'd say "off to a good start" but "runaway success" is a bit extreme after one day.

 

[Solomani]

Never thought I’d see a thread where Zuck is the good guy.

I dunno about the label good guy.

Let's try "the lesser of two dbags" -- that kinda rolls off the tongue nicely, doesn't it?

 

[Reason077]

Personally, I'm waiting for the results of the upcoming Elon vs. Zuck cage fight before deciding whether to dump Twitter and get Threads.

 

[Solomani]

Personally, I'm waiting for the results of the upcoming Elon vs. Zuck cage fight before deciding whether to dump Twitter and get Threads.

Vegas-style betting need to happen for this Main Event!

 

[charlesdayton]

Tweeter vs Meta.

Whoever looses, people win. Awful companies run by awful CEOs.

 

[ninethirty]

Well, how inept can they be if they were in on "trade secrets" and Elon is complaining publicly about them working for Zuckerberg now that Threads is taking off?

Yes, I get that not every single individual Elon fired from Twitter was some top level super genius software engineer. Obvious, most were replaceable to some extent. That's how it usually is.

But there's some crazy mental gymnastics going on in your head if you insist that Elon never makes mistakes and only fired lazy, useless employees from Twitter. But then you, at the same time, support the employee poaching narrative that Elon is alleging here.

The story is either that Meta has legitimately been poaching Twitter to destroy the company by taking its top talent and trade secrets and using it to build Threads. That Elon didn't want to fire these top employees but they were bribed to work for Zuckerberg.

Or the story is that Elon did everything right throughout his Twitter takeover and he just fired a ton of useless people that are of use to nobody, neither for their skills or insider knowledge.

It can't be both at the same time. So which is it?

*Then there's also the third even more likely scenario that Elon is just being a sore loser and that his own decision to repeatedly implement more and more limitations/restrictions for both free and paid Twitter users is what's pushing droves of people to sign up for the new Twitter-clone that offers everything pre-Musk Twitter offered with none of the limitations and subscription fees of 2023 Twitter? Plus it's backed by one of the biggest players in tech and social, Meta?

Wow, that was...something.

My man, all I said was that I doubt the smartest engineers in the world worked at Twitter.

 

[Solomani]

The Match of the Century: Musk vs Zuck


Round 3 bell rings:


Announcer 1: "And round 3! There's Musk, starting the round off with some fake jabs, a lot of taunting. But not really landing anything."

Announcer 2: ".... oooh THERE! Zuck nearly lands a leg sweep, you see Musk hobble there for a bit, eh? But still standing for now."

Announcer 1: "Yup! Saw that... then again, Zuck is a bona fide martial artist. The boy's got some moves in store for..."

Announcer 2: "What the hell.... WHO is that...."

Announcer 1: "Holy cow, this can't be real.... is it really... jumping into the ring... is THAT really..."

Announcer 2: "Tim Cook! Tim Cook wearing nothing but a Speedo and boxing gloves.... what the hell.... what the..."

Announcer 1: "Unreal. All of this is just.... unreal...."

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

‘Wrongfully terminated’ Lol. Getting rid of those triggered, self entitled children was a great move by Elon. They can push their ideologies on other platforms.

I'm sure all the wrongful termination suits would like to disagree with you, especially since several of them are citing UK and EU labor laws that Elon violated.

Your reply is all kinds of yikes fam.