Something Stupid This Way Comes: Twitter Threatens To Sue Meta Over Threads, Because Meta Hired Some Of The People Elon Fired
from the everything-is-stupid dept
Just fucking fight it out already.
The whole stupid “cage match” brawl thing was started when Meta execs made some (accurate) cracks about Elon’s management of Twitter, and Elon couldn’t handle it. But, now with the launch of Meta’s Threads, Elon feels the need to send a ridiculously laughable legal threat to Meta.
Elon’s legal lapdog, Alex Spiro, dashed off a threat letter so dumb that even his employer, Quinn Emanuel — who is famous among powerful law firms for having no shame at all — should feel shame.
Dear Mr. Zuckerberg:
I write on behalf of X Corp., as successor in interest to Twitter, Inc. (“Twitter”). Based on recent reports regarding your recently launched “Threads” app, Twitter has serious concerns that Meta Platforms (“Meta”) has engaged in systemic, willful, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property.
Lol, wut? Threads is like a dozen other microblogging type services. There are no “trade secrets” one needs to misappropriate from Twitter. I mean, seriously, who in their right mind thinks that Meta with billions of users of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp is learning anything from Twitter, beyond “don’t do the dumbshit things Elon keeps doing.”
Over the past year, Meta has hired dozens of former Twitter employees. 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 ongoing obligations to Twitter; and that many of these employees have improperly retained Twitter documents and electronic devices. With that knowledge, Meta deliberately assigned these employees to develop, in a matter of months, 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.
Let’s break this one down, because holy shit, is it ever stupid. The reason that Meta was able to hire a bunch of former Twitter employees most likely had to do with the fact that Elon recklessly fired 85% of the existing staff, and did so willy nilly, destroying tons of institutional knowledge and knowhow. And yet, Musk claimed he had to get rid of these employees because they were not hardcore, and were useless to Twitter. Yet, now we’re being told they are somehow invaluable to Threads? That doesn’t even pass the most basic laugh test.
The claim that “these employees have improperly retained Twitter documents and electronic devices” is particularly ridiculous, given that I’ve spoken to many, many, many ex-Twitter employees who have spent months trying to return their laptops, without Twitter bothering to respond to them at all. To use that against those employees is ridiculous.
And, really, what fucking “trade secrets” or “intellectual property’ do Spiro and Musk honestly think that any former employees took with them to Meta? How to competently run a microblogging service? This is all bluff and bluster from Elon, who knows he’s fucked up Twitter and is scared of any competition.
On top of that, assuming any of those employees are in California, then state law for the last century and a half has prohibited arguments regarding non-competes or similar, because the state has a stated policy that people should be allowed to be employed. So, to the extent that Twitter thinks it can enforce some sort of quasi-non-compete agreement, that’s just not going to fly.
Update: Also, Meta has now said that none of the small team working on Threads is a former Twitter employee anyway, so the assumptions in the letter are entirely false.
The letter continues:
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. Twitter reserves all rights, including, but not limited to, the right to seek both civil remedies and injunctive relief without further notice to prevent any further retention, disclosure, or use of its intellectual property by Meta.
In short, even as we’re not paying many of our bills and are desperately short on cash, especially compared to Meta, which has a building full of litigators, we’re ready, able, and willing to file a completely bogus, vexatious lawsuit just to try to annoy you.
Then we get to the real fear: that Meta might make it easy to recreate your Twitter social graph on threads:
Further, Meta is expressly prohibited from engaging in any crawling or scraping of Twitter’s followers or following data. As set forth in Twitter’s Terms of Service, crawling any Twitter services — including, but not limited to, any Twitter websites, SMS, APIs, email notifications, applications, buttons, widgets, ads, and commerce services — is permissible only “if done in accordance with the provisions of the robots.txt file” available at https://twitter.com/robots.txt. The robots.txt file specifically disallows crawling of Twitter’s followers or following data. Scraping any Twitter services is expressly prohibited for any reason without Twitter’s prior consent. Twitter reserves all rights, including but not limited to, the right to seek both civil remedies or injunctive relief without further notice.
So, yeah. This letter is basically Elon publicly admitting he’s scared shitless of Threads and its potential impact on Twitter. This is a “holy shit, this is bad, we’re fucked” kinda letter. Not one from a position of strength. Honestly, this letter makes me think that Threads has a better chance than I initially expected, if Musk is so damn scared of it.
Of course, to date, I’ve seen no indication that Threads was looking to scrape Twitter or enable easy transfer of the Twitter social graph to threads. Of course, lots of third parties often create such tools, and we’ve already seen Elon freak out over tools that helped users find their Twitter social graph on Mastodon, so I guess this is how he competes. By throwing up bogus walls.
That said, Meta can’t really say much here. After all, it set one of the horrible precedents in court regarding scraping data from websites to build services on top of them. To the extent that Twitter actually has any legal power to stop Meta from scraping, that power was given to it via a bad lawsuit that Meta itself started and pushed to completion.
Though, again, there’s been no indication that Meta actually plans to do that. The fact that it’s able to bootstrap its network off of the (much, much, much larger than Twitter) Instagram network suggests it has no need to port Twitter’s social graph over.
Again, this legal threat letter appears to be legal bluster from the much weaker party of the two.
I doubt this turns into an actual legal dispute, though with Elon, you never really know. If it does turn into a live dispute however, assuming that Meta didn’t do something preposterously silly (like asking former Twitter employees to share internal documents), then Meta will destroy this lawsuit easily.
But, you know, if we’re going to see a cage match between these two billionaires, why not just throw this on the undercard as well.
Filed Under: alex spiro, competition, elon musk, employees, intellectual property, mark zuckerberg, scraping, threads, trade secrets
Companies: meta, threads, twitter
Comments on “Something Stupid This Way Comes: Twitter Threatens To Sue Meta Over Threads, Because Meta Hired Some Of The People Elon Fired”
Stupid Lawsuits
I haven’t seen a dumber lawsuit since the cops who raided Afroman’s compound sued him for violating their “privacy” while they were raiding his own home.
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To be fair, this is not a lawsuit. Yet.
It’s only a threat letter at this stage, which does have legal value as notification, but isn’t a court filing. I’m curious how this would all be worded in an actual suit, so I’m kind of cheering for them to follow up. Despite the waste of resources for the judicial system. (Hopefully not too much as this should be quickly laughed out of court.)
No Ex-Twitter employees working on Threads...
Someone at Meta responded with “no one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee—that’s just not a thing.”
It wasn’t an official response, but it’s not like the pointless letter full of empty bluster needs an official response, unless it’s a Poop Emoji…
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I’d imagine the only official response needed would be something like the following:
On the one hand, they might have had non-compete clauses.
On the other hand, Musk seems to have refused to abide by any other contract law, from paying suppliers to giving people notice that they were being fired and paying the agreed severance so I imagine people will be easily protected if Meta wants to keep them.
“This is a “holy shit, this is bad, we’re fucked” kinda letter.”
Well, I’m glad he finally caught up with the rest of us at least. I wonder if he’ll catch on to why – and it’s not because there’s suddenly competition from ZuckBot.
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Is a non-compete clause even enforceable if you are fired?
Re: Re:
No idea, but I suspect I’ve looked into it as much as Musk has. I also suspect that Zuck has told his lawyers to go over the contracts and make whatever preparations necessary for anyone he might have “poached”, during the time when Musk was apparently more focussed on arguing with people on Twitter and not paying bills.
Re: Re:
I imagine things like customer lists and company confidential information would. Employment vis-a-vi skill set in an industry you are trained in isn’t enforceable anywhere, for any reason from what I understand. The usual restrictions apply as I don’t lawyer. I’d purchase a licensed opinion before relying on my possibly flawed understanding.
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Re: Re: Re: It depends
Salaried and executives are allowed to have non-competes, however that bargain comes at the expense, and typically these employment contracts include things like severance.
The prohibition is not to prevent labor mobility, but rather trade secret and intellectual property mobility, considering that they are mostly intangible property.
wage employees are disallowed from having non competes for this reason.
Re: Re: Re:2
“The prohibition is not to prevent labor mobility,”
I call bullshit.
From where does this insight come? Are you present when such things are discussed at corporate meetings? You some HR expert? Lipstick on a pig territory here.
Re: Re: Re:
“Poaching” of customers and employees would be covered by a non-solicitation clause—a close relative of the non-compete that’s less likely to be thrown out by courts. More general “confidential information” would be covered by a confidentiality clause.
Non-compete clauses are definitely enforceable in some cases, including in some US states. Sometimes even if they’re really broad, though a company might have to pay one’s full salary for the non-compete period (“garden leave”). And since companies won’t want to do that for most employees, this is really more of a scare tactic, and I hear it can often be defeated by having a lawyer write a letter.
Re: Re: Re:2
Notably, California isn’t one of those states.
Re: Re: Re:3
Indeed, the rise of Silicon Valley is often linked to the unenforceability of non-compete clauses—going all the way back to the so-called “traitorous eight” in 1957.
But does this apply to employees of California corporations who are not in California themselves?
Re: Re: Re:4
California’s post-employment non-compete applies to anyone working in California – both employees and independent contractors.
The only way around it is if the employee also owns a major portion of the company OR a contract negotiated by an employee’s attorney specifies an non-California venue and law clause to apply (Labor Code 925). That part of Labor Code 925 was just upheld federally too this year in the 9th Circuit case DePy Synthes Sales v. Howmedica Ostionic’s (https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2022/03/14/21-55126.pdf).
And you can sue in California for trying to pull a fast one around Labor Code 925 regardless of what the contract says if you claim your employer handed you a non-compete while being a California worker.
Re: Re:
Quite famously, non-compete clauses are almost never enforceable in California, although not all affected employees are located there.
Re: Re:
Pretty sure the NLRB recently ruled non-compete clauses were unenforceable period.
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If you have a valid non-compete clause in your contract (so you don’t live/work in California) then Musk breaking the law does not give you the right to break the law as well and ignore that non-compete.
Or to put it in simpler terms: Two wrongs don’t make a right.
Considering we’re talking about the same lawyer who allegedly “loudly opined that it was unreasonable for Twitter’s landlords to expect Twitter to pay rent, since San Francisco was a “shithole.”, i didn’t expect anything better.
I’d like to see what happens if this actually goes to court though, this saga has not enough moments for genuine laugh.
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Re: Not as absurd as you would think.
If you rent a house, and the property owner refuses to abate nuisance, or for example the city changes the zoning, such things can be considered unconscionable at the time of the agreement.
Property rights include the fructus, usus, and abusus, and for example being unable to remove the homeless, does limit a renters property rights, for example.
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Went away for half a dozen years only to come back and find that techdirt has devolved into a special Sunday edition tabloid braying about the latest mudslinging between celebrities, only in this case, the petulant CEOs of two of the biggest and most ridiculous MEGA-tabloid cartoon companies.
What’s next? Bigfoot? Get a grip.
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Lol, thanks for playing.
See you in six years.
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I can’t imagine why you think your disdain for this fora was important enough for us to be informed of it. To put it kindly, I’m sure 99.99% of us couldn’t care any less what you think.
Feel free to return the sentiment. We won’t care any way.
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Reporting on lawsuit threats and accusations of trade secret theft between two of the largest tech companies is “tabloid” now? Dang, tabloids have been on the up while I wasn’t looking.
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No you didn’t.
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And instead of just closing the tab like a normal person you felt the need to comment.
Re: Re:
Every so often you get this sort of loon who thinks he’s being fivehead and making a big brain play by admitting that he’s expended mental faculties to calculate the time between his (alleged) last two visits to a website he neglected at best and hates at worst. He genuinely thinks this is an groundbreaking act of trolling.
Realistically all it means is that he held a grudge for that long and thought that just by admitting he had it he’d somehow convince the other users to either collectively abandon the site they have no problems with, or suck his cock for his profound wisdom. It’s like Andrew Tate levels of small dick energy.
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You should go away for another dozen years.
??
I’m confused…who’s Twiter?
Re:
How do you say “Your mom” in Mandarin?
Re: Re:
Just say grass mud horse.
Re: Re:
That would be 你妈 (nǐ mā)
Disclaimer I don’t speak mandarin and am about 50% sure that’s right
Re: Re: Re:
I’m giving that a funny vote for the honesty.
Re: Re: Re:
ni ma is “you mother” — the pedantic literal translation of “your mother” is “ni de ma” where de is the possessive marker. But it may be that the possessive marker may be omitted without loss of meaning.
你的媽 / 妳的媽 (Taiwan, depending on whether “you” is male/female)
你的妈 (Mainland China)
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It’s amisspelling of Twhiter.
If Musk and Spiro had anything of substance they would have filed a. Real lawsuit. It this baseless demand letter.
I wonder if this is one of those situations where Musk was in a petulant rage and demanded Spiro do something to stop Meta from launching.
So Spiro, knowing he has no case here at all, just wrote the letter to make his childish boss feel like something was done. Hoping that Musk will move on in 48 hours to another shiny object.
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Saying that – if Musk does sue, I would absolutely love if we found out that the sloppy transition to X-Corp from Twitter was so poorly done that it cancelled any employment contract he had with the fired employees. So even the NDA, non-compete, or confidentiality agreements are void.
Little chance of course. It it would be so funny I would actually rejoin Twitter just to laugh as his account.
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In pro wrestling, back in the 80s and 90s, whenever a freshly departed former employee would sign elsewhere, Vince McMahon used to like to send legal threats to their new employer on the night of their on screen debut in the hope they’d blink and mess up their show out of fear of legal action. It’s a cheap way just to mess with the competition without any real obligation to follow through.
One has to wonder if an NDA/no compete agreement still matters when Twitter is still in breach providing payments to workers.
Moron
It is increasingly obvious that Musk is just not very bright. Add in really poor impulse control, and had he not been born rich, he’d be in jail for one grift or another.
Really amusing to watch, though, if you can get past all the damage he’s done.
Dude’s going to be a horror of a cranky old man.
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Musk is what happens when someone who frequently shitposts on one of the chans (I seriously believe we will find out he was an early member and continues to have an active account) becomes an adult.
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Re: Re: LOL
I seriously doubt that, as there are no “accounts” on the chans, because they are anonymous.
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I mean, anonymous accounts are a thing, but yeah, I’m not sure that the chans have accounts at all. We might find out that he was an early user and/or still actively uses it today (though that seems unlikely), but being an early member or active user… That part doesn’t make sense.
Re: Re: Re:2
2ch and its descendents do not have systems to create and mai tain accounts.
However, they have usernames and tripcodes, which don’t do the same thing but serve a similar purpose.
Yep, even admins and moderators have to remember their unique tripcodes if they want to post as the admin or a mod.
these employees owe ongoing obligations to Twitter
The ones Twitter hasn’t paid? Those employees?
Only if it’s an actual, honest to goodness, HELL IN A CELL RULES cage match.
We could even sell tickets! And pay per view!
Well, now Musk has something to blame other than his own incompetence. He’s mistaken, but hey…
Twitter's most valuable Trade Secret
Twitter may have a case. Is enshittification a trade secret?
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Another day, another entry into the shameful chronicles of MM disgustingly and disturbingly attacking Twitter and Elon Musk in the pages of TD…
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Okay, snowflake.
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…hallicinated nobody mentally competent, ever.
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Did you expect them not to talk about a legal threat between two tech companies? It’s not like they covered the cage match thing.
Muskerburgers
Up next: McDonalds sues Burger King for offering french fries, and for hiring former McDonald’s employees who kept their paper hats and knew about putting fries in baskets instead of using their hands in the hot oil.
Ugh
I’d expected better
This is not about non-compete. This is about theft, damned hard to prove theft but still theft. Phrased in such a way that Spiro does not have to go after the individuals that did the stealing but instead can go after Meta.
That is why the letter contains the claim that Meta knowingly and deliberately employed thieves to make use of what the thieves stole from Twitter.
It is going to be a nigh impossible claim to prove, to the point that Meta can make a reasonable claim it is a frivolous lawsuit meant to deliberately impede competition if Spiro decides to make good on the threat to sue.
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What property are you claiming Twitter’s been deprived of? As far as I can tell, Twitter is making no claim of such.
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If Twitter cannot be bothered to recover laptops from ex-employees, they are not stealing anything from Twitter.
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No, if you want to be pedantic, its about misappropriation of trade secrets. Twitter is threatening Meta, and meta didn’t commit the supposed theft.
More importantly, the section I bolded in the above quote? Thats a Non-compete or Non-disclosure claim. Without one of those, employees have no ongoing obligations to protect Twitter’s trade secrets. If a theft occured, sure, thats not a non-compete claim, but as the theft claim is disputed by the public record, its understandable the “ongoing obligations” saw the most commentary as much a more clear cut issue.
Boy it would really suck for Musk’s case if someone in leadership at his company claimed that their code is so shitty it needed an entire rewrite.
Or that the employees he fired were not good enough for the company.
One would think that would be problematic for Twitter trying to prove harm.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1632810081497513993?lang=en
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/nov/16/elon-musk-gives-twitter-staff-deadline-to-commit-to-being-hardcore
When twitter are forced, kicking and screaming, to participate in the arbitration process with former employees, I wonder how badly this legal threat will backfire on them. You can’t claim people are worthless and were fired with cause while also demanding they don’t take their skills elsewhere and threated their employer as twitter still needs them.
This just adds to the Universal Need to see Muck and Zuskerberg in a cage match. Only, add some red Georgia clay mud, and chicken suits, replete with loose feathers.
I’m starting to suspect Musk’s legal team is Prenda Law with another name.
Re: Prenda?
Prenda is partially dead (literally) and the rest of the “brains” is still in prison, hand-writing requests for parole.
However, Lawyers have a duty to accept clients even if their case is terribly slim. Knowing Musk, his big head and his thick wallet it is no surprise some junior lawyer was tasked to write this bluster.
Re: Re:
Dude, it’s a joke 🙂
... just thank you
Thank you for this. All the regular news treated the letter like it was normal, but it reads like it was written by an angry bush-league dilettante.
A lawyer letter is supposed to achieve some goal, and that goal should not be Invite Ridicule and Make Your Client Look Like an Idiot.
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” that goal should not be Invite Ridicule and Make Your Client Look Like an Idiot.”
There is a long history of such though …
https://news.lettersofnote.com/p/arkell-v-pressdram
Bonus points when it makes the lawyer look like an idiot too.
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Exactly! What elso can you expect from Alex “Elon puts rockets into space, he’s not afraid of the FTC” Spiro?
Predictable
Did Musk not realizing that some other social company can relatively easily go create a competitor to twitter. It’s like he was living in a world where no one else would be allowed to compete with Twitter. How is this the same person that built a successful car company in an absurdly competitive environment.
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Because the company pioneered the building of luxury electric cars, where the other manufacturers were not competing.
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He “built” the company in the sense that he’d hired and paid for the right people, who were willing to dedicate their time and effort into a deeply passionate project.
By the time he came to Twitter he was surrounded by simpering fools whose only contribution was to keep whispering “yes” in his ear.
If testimony from Tesla and SpaceX employees is anything to go by, all Musk has is a personality and not much else.
Suggested correction
On yer first line…
“Just fucking fight it out already.”
Alternate…
Just fighting fuck it out already.
C’mon, ya know they wanna.
Prior art everywhere
usenet’s been around since the 80s, right up til the big ISPs dumped on it and the smaller ones dumped it. PC bulletin boards have been around for just as long.
Source code’s freely available. Concepts have been discussed since computer networking was a thing.
Twitter always struck me as a lesser form of usenet.
Elon Musk’s an ignoramus. And this does look (and feel) unpleasantly like the the infamous SCO ravings of 2003 until they collapsed from a well-deserved bankruptcy. (Maybe the doofuses behind that SCO set of law threats and stupdity could sue Elon Musk for the Look And Feel aspects of this stupid letter. I can’t think of a court that wouldn’t give the SCO doofuses the case.
We would be significantly better off if none of this, including those in charge, had ever existed at all.
Facts matter
IF Twitter rejects gave Facebook proprietary information, They are criminal.
If not, too bad so sad moving on.
It’s really that simple.