Elon Musk took over Twitter eight months ago. Getty Images
Meta launched a text-based app called Threads that competes with platforms like Twitter.
In less than 24 hours after the app was released, Elon Musk’s lawyer sent out a cease and desist letter.
It accused Meta of hiring “dozens” of former Twitter employees and using them to develop Threads.
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About eight months before Meta launched its text-based app Threads, Elon Musk bought out Twitter. And laid off nearly half of the company’s 7,000 employees.
The decision drew some criticism, but Musk seemed to show little remorse. In a tweet, he wrote that he “would like to apologize for the dismissal of these geniuses.”
“Your immense talent will no doubt be of great use elsewhere,” he continued.
Now Musk’s lawyer is taking action against Meta. He claims the company hired some of the laid-off employees to develop a competing social media app.
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Dozens of employees hired
Less than 24 hours after starting Meta Threads, Musk’s attorney, Alex Spiro, has one cease and desist sent to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. In it, he accused the company of hiring “dozens of former Twitter employees” to develop a “copycat.”
Some of these employees “continue to have access to trade secrets and other highly confidential information from Twitter.” They had “unlawfully kept Twitter documents and electronic devices,” the letter said.
“Based on recent reports of its recently launched ‘Threads’ app, Twitter has serious concerns that Meta has been systematically, intentionally and unlawfully appropriated trade secrets and other intellectual property from Twitter,” the letter said.
A source familiar with both companiesBusiness Insider saidthat there are a handful of former Twitter employees at Meta, but none of them are currently working on threads.
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Meta’s chief communications officer, Andy Stone, wrote in a Threads post that “no one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee — it just doesn’t exist.”
Musk’s attorney, Spiro, did not respond to a request for comment.
Ever since the Tesla founder took over Twitter, Musk said in a BBC interviewthat he had laid off about 80 percent or 6,500 Twitter employees. The company has shrunk to fewer than 600 developers.
“One of the hardest” decisions
Musk said that firing so many employees was “one of the hardest” decisions and that it’s “not fun at all. Painful.”
Twitter has also rolled out a number of controversial changes under Musk, including fewer content moderation rules and a verification process that costs $8 a month.
Meta employees have for months seen the chaos at Twitter as an opportunity to build a competing app, like the New York Times previously reported.
Threads officially launched on Wednesday and had around 30 million signups by the next morning, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
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