Twitter's lawyer Alex Spiro wrote to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg threatening to sue Meta Platforms over its Threads platform.

Meta, which launched Threads on Wednesday and has over 30 million signups, hopes to challenge Elon Musk's Twitter by using Instagram's billions of users.

Spiro wrote that Meta hired former Twitter employees who "had and continue to have access to Twitter's trade secrets and other highly confidential information," Semafor reported.

Spiro accused Meta of hiring dozens of former Twitter employees who “had and continue to have access to Twitter’s trade secrets and other highly confidential information.”

He also claimed that Meta gave those employees “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.”

"No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee—that's just not a thing," Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in a Threads post.

To recall, Threads, Meta's Twitter alternative, launched the other day as Elon Musk's platform's users flee.

Instagram-integrated threads The new app, "Threads, an Instagram app," is described on Apple's app store as "Instagram's text-based conversation app."

Since Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in 2022, the rollout challenges Twitter's many controversies.

Meta will have to compete with other Twitter killers like Bluesky, Mastodon, Post News, Spoutible, Cohost, Hive Social, T2 Social, and Spill, as well as right-wing conversation platforms like Truth Social, Gettr, and Gab, and established social networks like Tumblr and Substack that are courting disenchanted Twitter users.

Threads are where communities discuss everything from today's hot topics to tomorrow's. "Whatever you’re interested in, you can follow and connect directly with your favourite creators and others who love the same things—or build a loyal following of your own to share your ideas, opinions, and creativity with the world," says the app's store description.

Meanwhile, RMIT University Prof. Lisa Given said Threads as a competitor to Twitter is a game-changer. Other platforms have attempted to serve as alternatives to Twitter since Elon Musk took over, with limited success

“What may give Threads an edge is that it's a text-feed platform that looks and feels like Twitter;  it’s linked to Instagram, so it will enable people to use their same username; and people will be able to engage with their Instagram followers, directly”, said Prof. Given.

She said This last point is critical. People are not just looking for something that offers similar functionality to Twitter. They want a platform where they can quickly find people they’re already engaging with so they can maintain social connections and not have to “start over” to build their community when they transition to a new platform.

“Instagram is already facilitating this by launching a ‘cheat’ for users to be among the first to download the new app by searching for ‘thread’ or ‘threads’ in Instagram’s search box and clicking on the red ‘admit one’ ticket icon to the right of the search box. She added that many users already have thousands of trusted followers and have built communities of like-minded people.

“If Meta's Threads can keep the features people love, not charge fees, offer easy access to existing followers, and provide a mechanism to verify accounts (especially to manage misinformation), it may well become a viable replacement for Twitter and increase the mass exodus that has already begun from Twitter’s core user base.” She disclosed

Thread's launch follows Twitter's restructuring under Tesla owner Elon Musk, who fired thousands and put many features behind a paywall.

Threads launched in over 100 countries but not in the EU, which has strict data privacy laws.

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