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Twitter is threatening to sue Meta over Threads | Semafor (www.semafor.com)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/tech@kbin.social
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The threat suggests that Threads is the most serious rival yet to Elon Musk’s chaotic social platform.

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[–] 36 points 3 years ago (7 children)

I can't believe that "240 character social media post" is somehow a trade secret. What are they expecting to tell the judge and not be laughed out of court?

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  • [–] 8 points 3 years ago* (4 children)

    It might be possible to patent it. Look at Wizards of the Coast and all their crazy card game patents. But the only reason they were able to do that is because their patents are incredibly detailed and specific. So they could change it to 256 characters or something and be fine.

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  • [–] 10 points 3 years ago (3 children)

    IIRC Threads is 500 characters, not 240, so that wouldn't be a something they could sue over.

    However, Twitter has over 2000 patents filed, over 1400 of which are registered in the United States. They deal with malicious advertisement detection & remediation, malware, automatic management of data processing, mobile app management, interactive advertising, and electric publishing to name a few.

    I can see where Musk may have found similarities between the software somewhere in the mess of their patents.

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  • [–] 10 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    But just how would they know the internals of Threads? According to Meta, even Twitter's claim that Threads devs include ex-Twitter employees is wrong.

    To me it sounds like Twitter's legal action is just an obstruction tactic.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago

    Smells of desperation to me. I mean, if I saw a competitor pop up overnight and gain ten million users in a single day, I'd be looking for ways to stop it too. I mean, after cleaning the worry diarrhea out of my pants.

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