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…Elon Musk threatens to sue Meta over new app
By Chinenye Anuforo
Meta chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg has disclosed that thirty million users have signed up for its newly launched Threads app on its first day.
As at the time of filling this report, the number however has increased.
He pitched the app as a “friendly” rival to Twitter, which was bought by Elon Musk in October.
Industry watchers say Threads could attract Twitter users unhappy with recent changes to the platform.
But Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino said though Twitter is “often imitated”, its community can “never be duplicated”.
Threads allows users to post up to 500 characters, and has many features similar to Twitter.
Earlier, Zuckerberg said keeping the platform “friendly… will ultimately be the key to its success”.
But Musk responded: “It is infinitely preferable to be attacked by strangers on Twitter, than indulge in the false happiness of hide-the-pain Instagram.”
When asked on Threads whether the app will be “bigger than Twitter”, Mr Zuckerberg said: “It’ll take some time, but I think there should be a public conversations app with 1 billion+ people on it.
“Twitter has had the opportunity to do this but hasn’t nailed it. Hopefully we will.”
The launch has had a warm response online.
Competitors have criticised the amount of data the app might use. This may include health, financial, and browsing data linked to users’ identities, according to the Apple App Store.
Some users have also expressed concern that it is not possible to delete your Threads profile without deleting the associated Instagram profile. Meta told the BBC: “At this time, you can’t delete your Threads profile without deleting your Instagram account. This is something we’re working on. In the meantime, you can deactivate your Threads profile at any time.
“Deactivating your Threads profile will not deactivate your Instagram account”.
Deactivation will mean your Threads profile, your posts and interactions with others’ posts won’t be visible, the firm added.
Users can download and delete Threads data by visiting their Instagram settings, Meta says.
Threads is now available to download in over 100 countries including the UK, but not yet in the EU because of regulatory concerns.
Initial version
Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, called the new app an “initial version”, with extra features planned including the ability to interact with people on other social media apps like Mastodon.
“Our vision with Threads is to take what Instagram does best and expand that to text,” the firm said prior to its launch.
Despite Threads being a standalone app, users log in using an Instagram account. Their Instagram username carries over, but there is an option to customize their profile specifically for Threads.
Users will also be able to choose to follow the same accounts they do on Instagram, Meta says. The app allows users to be private on Instagram, but public on Threads.
There are several alternatives to Twitter available, such as Bluesky and Mastodon, but these have struggled to gain traction.
Threads has a significant advantage because it is connected to Instagram, and the hundreds of millions of users already on that platform.
How does Threads work?
On Threads, posts can be shared to Instagram and vice versa and can include links, photos, and videos of up to five minutes in length.
However, some early users on Wednesday reported problems when uploading images, hinting at teething problems.
Users see a feed of posts, which Meta calls “threads”, from people they follow as well as recommended content.
They are able to control who can “mention” them and filter out replies to posts that contain specific words.
Unfollowing, blocking, restricting or reporting other profiles is also possible, and any accounts users block on Instagram are automatically blocked on Threads.
While Meta stresses ties to Instagram, media coverage has focused on its similarity to Twitter, with some investors describing the app as a “Twitter killer”.
In another development, Twitter has threatened to sue Meta over its new app, which Zuckerberg openly billed as a rival, claiming the company has violated Twitter’s “intellectual property rights”.
In a letter to Meta CEO , first published by the news outlet Semafor, a lawyer for Twitter said the company “has serious concerns that Meta Platforms (Meta) has engaged in systematic, willful and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property”.
“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,” Alex Spiro wrote in the let Twitter claims in the cease-and-desist that Meta has poached dozens of former employees in the past year, some of whom “had and continue to have access to Twitter’s trade secrets and other highly confidential information” and “many” of whom have “improperly” kept Twitter documents or electronic devices.
“With that knowledge, Meta deliberately assigned these employees to develop, in a matter of months, Meta’s copycat ‘Threads’ app with the specific intent that they use Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property in order to accelerate the development of Meta’s competing app, in violation of both state and federal law as well as those employees’ ongoing obligations to Twitter,” the letter reads.
“Competition is fine, cheating is not,” Musk tweeted on Thursday.
In response to the letter, Meta’s communications director, Andy Stone, posted on Threads that there are no engineers on the team that used to work at Twitter.
It’s unclear what evidence Twitter has that former employees who now work at Meta continue to have access to Twitter intellectual property or trade secrets. Twitter responded to a request for comment with an automated email of a poop emoji.
Twitter also said Meta was “prohibited” from scraping data from any Twitter service. Twitter’s owner, Elon Musk, has recently made several moves to purportedly curtail any efforts to scrape Twitter data, including limiting the number of tweets users can see in a day. At the time, Musk said it was in response to companies using Twitter to train their AI models.
