Elon Musk has a new social media rival to Twitter called “Threads.” Upset liberals who can’t cope with unfettered free speech are flocking to the new platform opened up by Mark Zuckerberg. Musk doesn’t mind the competition. Bring it on, he insists. But, please don’t steal my intellectual property or you’ll be hearing from my lawyers. That’s a fair request. It didn’t take long for a self-proclaimed parody Twitter account pretending to be Elon Musk to post: “I spent $44 billion for this app and now Lizard boy just decided to hit copy and paste. It’s personal now. See you in the cage, Zuck.” Musk did not post that but you can be certain he’s still laughing about it.
Social media smack down
Twitter did, in fact, threaten to sue social media giant Meta Platforms over their rival new offering, Threads.
Their lawyer, Alex Spiro, sent a nasty letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg warning the Facebook sister site to stay between the legal lines or face the consequences in court.
The moment Zuckerberg plugged it in to the interweb, more than 30 million people and python scripts tried to sign up.
I spent $44 billion for this app and now Lizard boy just decided to hit copy and paste.
It’s personal now.
See you in the cage, Zuck.
— Elon Musk (Parody) (@ElonMuskAOC) July 7, 2023
Their engineers crafted it as a sort of plug-in for photo media based Instagram, hoping to tap the billions of users who only communicate through images, because they can’t read words more complicated than the ones used in a bio blurb.
Musk has good reasons for threatening Zuckerberg from the beginning. In his letter, Spiro “accused Meta of hiring former Twitter employees.” Ones who “had and continue to have access to Twitter’s trade secrets and other highly confidential information.”
That’s okay, Twitter can use the judgment money they’ll get because these things are clearly established in the intellectual property laws. Musk paid a lot more than the social media platform was worth but he owns all that engineering.
Twitter trade secrets
Zuckerberg seems to think he can swipe a whole social media platform with impunity. That’s what makes that parody post so amusing. It’s totally accurate. “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.”
They’re being so nice with the request now to make it easier to get a bigger award later when it’s ignored.
Meanwhile, Meta denies any wrongdoing. The engineers running their social media platform are as pure as the driven snow. “No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee — that’s just not a thing,” Meta spokesperson Andy Stone declared. The former Twitter employees aren’t on the team, they’re only “advisers.”
.@GeorgesStPierre says he hopes that @elonmusk doesn't fight Mark Zuckerberg because he considers Musk a once-in-a-lifetime inventor whose valuable time is better served building transformative technology, but he will train Musk if he wants to fight.
"We want him to keep… pic.twitter.com/LHIvB53ia5
— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) July 9, 2023
Reuters went out and rounded up some unconnected and out of work Twitter employee in a bar just so they could quote him saying they, personally, “were not aware of any former staffers working on Threads, nor any senior personnel who landed at Meta at all.” They are entitled to their opinion but that doesn’t make it true.
Another thing that’s amusing, free speech protecting Twitter yanked an account tracking Musk’s private jet on the grounds it endangered Musk’s family. Over on the social media platform promising to censor any speech which offends sensitive Democrats, they reinstated the potentially harmful “hate” account. The hypocrisy is astounding.
The real Elon Musk got a look at the Lizard boy tweet and replied. After noting that was a clearly labeled parody post, he noted: “Competition is fine, cheating is not.” Zuckerberg will have one small problem unless he does some code surgery. “Threads’ user interface has a striking resemblance to the microblogging platform Twitter.” It doesn’t work as well though. “Threads does not support keyword searches or direct messages.”