Just how similar is Instagram\u2019s chatty new app, Threads, to Twitter?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a cease-and-desist letter earlier this week, Twitter\u00a0threatened legal action\u00a0against Instagram parent company Meta over the new text-based app\u00a0Threads, which it called a \u201ccopycat.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Threads has drawn tens of millions of users since launching as the latest rival to Elon Musk\u2019s social media platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Threads creators pushed back on the accusations, and legal experts note that much is still unknown. For now, \u201cit\u2019s sort of a big question mark,\u201d Jacob Noti-Victor, an associate professor at Yeshiva University\u2019s Cardozo Law School who specializes in intellectual property, told The Associated Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The people starting to explore Threads, however, are already making their own observations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cPeople are calling it a Twitter clone but I think there are some key product differences,\u201d said Alexandra Popken, Twitter\u2019s former head of trust and safety operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One difference, she thinks, will likely be the people who use it. At Threads, \u201cyou\u2019re essentially taking your audience from Instagram and putting this into a new text-based app, whereas Twitter is a kind of a niche audience for politicians, celebrities and news junkies,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yet even though Threads makers have said they aren\u2019t particularly interested in making it a politics forum, it\u2019s likely to attract journalists and politicians, among others, looking for a Twitter alternative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Instagram\u2019s CEO, Adam Mosseri, said Threads isn\u2019t aiming to replace Twitter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe goal is to create a public square for communities on Instagram that never really embraced Twitter and for communities on Twitter (and other platforms) that are interested in a less angry place for conversations, but not all of Twitter,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Politics and hard news will inevitably show up on Threads, he acknowledged, \u201cbut we\u2019re not going to do anything to encourage those verticals.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a Wednesday letter addressed to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Alex Spiro, an attorney representing Twitter, accused Meta of unlawfully using Twitter\u2019s trade secrets and other intellectual property by hiring former Twitter employees to create a \u201ccopycat\u201d app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a reply to a tweet about the possibility of legal action against Meta, Musk wrote: \u201cCompetition is fine, cheating is not.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone responded in a Threads post Thursday that \u201cno one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From Spiro\u2019s letter, which was first\u00a0obtained by news outlet Semafor\u00a0on Thursday, Noti-Victor said it\u2019s hard to tell what the trade secrets referred to might be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Spiro says ex-Twitter employees \u201cimproperly retained\u201d company documents and electronic devices \u2014 pointing to ongoing confidentiality obligations. There was no explicit reference, however, to a breach of any binding agreement in the letter, and most noncompete clauses, for example, are prohibited in California.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In addition, despite Threads\u2019 similarities to Twitter, \u201cjust the idea of creating a social media platform involving text (is) certainly not something that would be a trade secret,\u201d Noti-Victor added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He is skeptical of intellectual property violations for similar reasons, noting that companies \u201ccan\u2019t patent something that\u2019s obvious\u201d or copyright a general idea for a social media platform. Copyright can protect source code and the text of a website, but Noti-Victor said he doesn\u2019t see that reproduced in Threads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Experts add that companies in Silicon Valley are constantly making products or services inspired by competitors\u2019 versions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe industry has a storied past of borrowing ideas from each other,\u201d said Popken, adding that Threads and other platforms such as Mastodon and Bluesky are \u201ctrying to capitalize on what is demand for a suitable, safer alternative to Twitter.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meta has a track record of starting standalone apps that mirror competitors, although many later shut down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Beyond trade secret and intellectual property allegations, Spiro also wrote that Meta is prohibited from \u201cengaging in any crawling or scraping of Twitter\u2019s followers or following data.\u201d He said the letter marked a \u201cformal notice\u201d for Meta to preserve documents relevant for a potential dispute between the companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Any letter of this kind should be taken seriously, said Carl Tobias, law professor at the University of Richmond\u2019s School of Law \u2014 but he, too, added that much is still unknown. More specific allegations and documents could come forward if litigation is pursued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tobias speculated that Twitter\u2019s move could be partly about publicity, as well as a strategic response both legally and business-wise. Musk\u2019s legal team has made similar moves before, such as a\u00a0May letter to Microsoft\u00a0objecting to alleged misuse of Twitter data to train artificial intelligence systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Among those elevating the clone-or-not question this week was Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey, who has championed Bluesky, and joked in a tweet: \u201cWe wanted flying cars, instead we got 7 Twitter clones.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For Popken, who now works at content moderation startup WebPurify, what most stands out about Threads so far is how much fun she\u2019s having using it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI see brands like Slim Jim trying to be funny. I see influencers who I follow on Instagram and people who I care about in my life,\u201d she said. \u201cThere\u2019s like this period of time where the bad actors haven\u2019t found it yet. It\u2019s like this non-toxic, happy corner of the internet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But \u201cmake no mistake,\u201d she added, those content moderation problems that have plagued other platforms \u201cwill certainly strike Threads over time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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