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Twitter threatens to sue Meta over Threads app – report (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 59 points 3 years ago (2 children)

Aha. This may be why Threads is based on ActivityPub - a way to prevent accusations of it being a Twitter clone. It's just an innocent member of the Fediverse. ;)

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

    Yep. Being a part of the fediverse gives Meta a defensible argument that (1) they are not stealing Twitter's intellectual property as Mastodon already exists and (2) they are not monopolizing the Twitter-like social media environment as any of their users could move to Mastodon if they wanted to.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago)

    The second point only works once they meaningfully federate and stay meaningfully federated.

    But more importantly:

    1. There is probably no Twitter IP at issue. There could be some patents, hard to guess, but I imagine Meta and Twitter have a cross license, or at least a detente because they could sue each other so hard that only the lawyers would win.

    Edit: Oh, Twitter is accusing Facebook of misappropriating trade secrets. It's theoretically possible that one or two laid off twitter employees reused some trade secret information, but... I feel like this is a fishing expedition, Twitter doesn't actually have any suspicion that Facebook did that, they just wanna be dicks about it.

    1. They can't be monopolizing this space while Twitter still has almost all the market share. They could be accused of attempting to monopolize if they did things like predatory pricing, but that's a hard case to make, and even if they do gain market share, at this point, it's going to be because of Twitter actively ruining its own product and throwing its large positive network effect advantage right in the trash. Nobody could possibly blame Facebook for that, Twitter would never win, even in a country that did enforce antitrust laws against tech companies.
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  • [–] 8 points 3 years ago (3 children)

    The second point may actually be very true. This way they are a smaller target for anti-trust investigations in case Twitter is completely obsoleted by Threads.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 years ago* (1 child)

    There's also the regulation angle. The Digital Markets Act is likely why they're federating: https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-2019-2024/europe-fit-digital-age/digital-markets-act-ensuring-fair-and-open-digital-markets_en

    Examples of the “do’s” - Gatekeeper platforms will have to:

    • allow third parties to inter-operate with the gatekeeper’s own services in certain specific situations
    • allow their business users to access the data that they generate in their use of the gatekeeper’s platform
    • provide companies advertising on their platform with the tools and information necessary for advertisers and publishers to carry out their own independent verification of their advertisements hosted by the gatekeeper
    • allow their business users to promote their offer and conclude contracts with their customers outside the gatekeeper’s platform

    The interoperability is the big one. Being federated means that Threads isn't considered a "gatekeeper platform". I wouldn't be surprised if Instagram and maybe even Facebook itself start to federate as well. Since Threads isn't currently connected to the wider fediverse, that's probably why they're not in the EU yet.

    This also means that fears of "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" are likely overblown. Breaking fediverse interoperability means that they'd be a gatekeeper again and subject to EU regulations against gatekeepers. Interestingly, both Twitter and Reddit are now likely subject to being considered gatekeepers due to making their APIs effectively inaccessible.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 years ago

    Very good point! I don't think the threat from Meta is technological, they also seem to be good citizens on the the open source projects they collaborate on.

    I am far more concerned about how Threads is going to change the community. Not the vapid influencer crap, but the toxicity, divisiveness, bigotry and disinformation coming out of Facebook.

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