Twitter to Sue Facebook

well it's official Elon Musk and the

x-corporation Twitter group are

apparently uh sending a letter that is

very reminiscent of a cease and desist

letter here even though those words

don't appear to be used at least I've

had my first reads here to Facebook for

basically launching threads and

potentially deliberately uh using

employees that used to work at Twitter

and copying what Twitter calls Trade

Secrets now we've just been doing a

little bit of looking around this and

I'll read some more context of the

letter here and we'll get to some

details but Twitter does open source

some of uh their technology and and some

of their code uh of course that they're

alleging in their letter that they have

trade secrets and other IP that Facebook

might be using or infringing on you know

yesterday was a big running joke after

threads launched that uh well hey this

looks oddly similar to Twitter and I

mean it frankly does when you click on

threads in Threads the comment button

looks almost the same the retweet button

just says repost it's almost like it's

just a Twitter copy with the small

little edit where you can't post long

form videos and you don't have spaces

but otherwise everything else is the

same now I will say the linking to

Instagram functionality fantastic and

maybe there'll be some ad potential for

the platform this morning the financial

times reported that 10 million users had

already signed up Zuck then later

followed up and said no we're actually

at already 30 million users and so sure

enough here we go now that uh users are

signing up for it it looks like X is

sending a letter so we'll read some

details of this keep in mind I'm I'm in

Utah right now we're looking to explore

really what we are exploring real estate

so uh forgive me for filming while we're

on the road here this just broke so it

says here Dear Mr Zuckerberg this is uh

the law firm for muskinx.com I write on

behalf of the x-corp the successor in

interest to Twitter based on recent

reports regarding your recently launched

threads app and I want to know what

these recent reports are behind you so

based on recent reports like what

mainstream allegations of copycatting I

mean I I've been posting those tweets

like all day long but anyway based on

recent reports regarding your recently

launched at threads app Twitter has

serious concerns that meta has engaged

in systemic willful and unlawful

misappropriation of Twitter's Trade

Secrets and other IP over the past year

meta has hired dozens a former Twitter

employees well Twitter did lay off like

80 percent of their staff so In fairness

they're going to apply somewhere else

but anyway Twitter knows that these

employees previously worked at Twitter

that these employees had and continue to

have access to Twitter's Trade Secrets

and other highly confidential

information that these employees owe

obligations to Twitter and that many of

these employees have inappropriately

retained Twitter documents and

electronic devices so this is basically

to say that people got laid off they

probably still had to maybe train their

successors or other remaining employees

and therefore still have administrative

logins at Twitter and access to company

code files new features internal

Communications this document is

essentially alleging that those people

who are still sort of in flux of

basically getting fired are looting

Twitter as they are walking out of uh

what some describe as a burning building

but anyway with that knowledge meta

deliberately assigned these employees to

develop in a matter of months met us

copycat threads app with a specific

intent to use Twitter's Trade Secrets

and other IP well duh in order to accept

accelerate the development of meta's

competing app in violation of both

federal and state law or these employee

obligations now I suppose this is where

is it is it illegal to write your own

code and make something that is similar

but then your own product or are people

potentially literally just copy and

pasting Trade Secrets and this obviously

would turn into a if it became a legal

battle which this isn't a lawsuit cease

and desist is just to potentially

honestly a way to market the fight

between Elon Musk and Zuck at least

that's what some people are saying this

is just a marketing opportunity it's

just going to bring more attention to

both Twitter and Facebook everybody's

gonna pick their sides you know uh these

people are going to support sock these

people are going to support Elon you

know Elon can do no wrong kind of people

go crazy here uh anyway and uh and it'll

really be years before any kind of

patent or trademark litigation or not

trademark IP litigation ever uh uh

honestly ever even gets underway this

stuff is so difficult and uh these cases

take forever to litigate but anyway over

the past year the document alleges here

that meta has hired dozens of former

Twitter employees

uh and that meta has explicitly been

prohibited from engaging in any kind of

crawling or scraping activities from

Twitter data but basically that the

employees are doing that anyway uh and

uh and that they they outline here the

only way you can look at data is if you

follow the rules under the robot.txt

file twitter.com robot.txt scraping any

Twitter Services is expressively

prohibited for any reason without

Twitter's prior consent and meta is

specifically Exempted uh or not Exempted

I should say specifically prohibited uh

from being anyone who gets permission to

crawl Twitter's data uh and so then they

conclude the letter by saying please

consider this letter formal notice that

meta must preserve any documents that

could be relevant to a dispute between

Twitter meta and or Twitter employees

honestly what this is also is it's an

attempt to send sort of a warning flag

or or like a warning shot to the

employees who left Twitter and it's kind

of a way to induce anxiety and stress

into those now fired or laid off

employees to basically say hey uh stop

using our stuff otherwise we're going to

sue you that's basically what this

letter is and whether it actually

practically makes any difference or

turns into any kind of practical lawsuit

or is it going to lead to any changes

the answer to all of those are probably

no uh and certainly the answer is no for

any kind of near-term future change it's

not like anybody actually expects

threads to change tomorrow because they

got a letter here all these companies

have staff attorneys and they'll just

they'll just send letters back and forth

uh it'll all just be a bunch of nonsense

but the drama is real and in my opinion

it's great marketing for the fight

between musk and uh Zuckerberg but again

practically here is the threads app

basically a copycat yes uh is there

probably going to be anything that comes

out of it within the next three years no

uh could something come out in the

future after that maybe but who cares

anyway that gives you an update on some

of the drama that's going on I did find

one of the replies uh it kind of

entertaining uh somebody uh wrote uh if

Twitter or sorry if threads breaks every

day then Twitter definitely has a strong

case

in other words if meta copy and pasted

the code from Twitter and both of them

suck then yeah you got a strong case

such a diss but also great comedy found

on Twitter not on threats because

there's no comedy yet on threads

not at all all right we'll see in the

next one thanks so much bye