Instagram Threads: first lawsuit for the Meta network!
As a reminder, Threads is a social network launched by Meta, directly linked to Instagram. Its objective is to offer an environment (very) similar to Twitter, in order to capture the market share of the social network owned by Elon Musk. If currently Threads is not available in Europe, you can still use it with this trick.
Why is Twitter suing Threads?
It is mail which will make noise. Alex Spiro, lawyer for Elon Musk, reportedly sent a letter to Meta group executives threatening the company with a lawsuit. We learn that X Corp, owner of Twitter, is considering legal action against Zuckerberg’s company for suspicion of theft of industrial secrets.
Competition is fine, cheating is not
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 6, 2023
It would, however, be a theft tinged with irony. Indeed, according to the mail, Twitter accuses Meta of having recruited former employees of the social network mainly to acquire their knowledge of the platform.
Revengeful employees?
But why were so many former Twitter engineers able to be recruited for the Threads project? The answer is simple and can be summed up in one word: Musk. Upon his arrival, the billionaire embarked on a quest for massive layoffs, justified either by budgetary reasons or by personal whim. The icing on the cake, most of these waves of dismissals were followed by sessions of public mockery by the boss of Twitter, against his former employees. An admirable man, then.
Dear @elonmusk 👋
9 days ago the access to my work computer was cut, along with about 200 other Twitter employees.
However your head of HR is not able to confirm if I am an employee or not. You’ve not answered my emails.
Maybe if enough people retweet you’ll answer me here?
— Halli (@iamharaldur) March 6, 2023
A link to the global blackout?
But, beyond the suspicion of industrial theft by Meta, through these recruitments, we learn in the letter that a more technical element is at the center of the issues. Thus, Twitter reminds Meta of the data scraping framework authorized by the blue bird platform.
Why is this relevant? Quite simply because the recent worldwide outage of Twitter, followed by a massive restriction of its use, was partly due to an overload of the platform’s servers. Overload itself caused by a massive increase in the activity of data collection robots on the network.
The fear of such a data import into Threads is at the heart of the issues. Indeed, it would allow any Twitter user to import all of their past activity to the new social network. This will facilitate the transition and make the Instagram platform attractive.
