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

    Good, let the lawyers feast on their corpses.

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    [–] 20 points 3 years ago (14 children)

    This seems like a pretty heavy lift for Twitter and while I hardly support Meta, if Twitter somehow manages to win sole ownership of the concept of microblogs it would be bad for everyone.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 years ago (13 children)

    So long, Mastodon. (On the plus side, so long Frank Speech, Truth Social, Gab, etc. etc. etc.)

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  • [–] 8 points 3 years ago (12 children)

    Yeah, my first reaction to this story was, why didn't they sue any of the other Twitter clones before this?

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago (7 children)

    Because Elon wasn’t worried about those.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago (6 children)

    I think it's also pretty likely Meta is using actual code from Twitter, though. It's not an upstanding company and it put Threads together as fast as possible.

    Mastodon was put together over several years using open-source software and keeping open-source, so it probably genuinely doesn't infringe on those patents.

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

    I highly doubt that a company with the monetary force behind it that Meta has needs to steal code from Twitter. Besides, it's made evident more every day that Twitter is the code equivalent of spaghetti and duct tape after Musk had his way with it.

    And what makes X upstanding in comparison to Meta? I mean I'm honestly not arguing in favor of Meta and Threads as much as I'm trying to paint the picture that this is Elon "I'll sign an agreement buying Twitter for $44 Billion and attempt to fight my way out of it before the ink dries" Musk that is on the other side of this.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (2 children)

    Oh Elon's a piece of shit. It's just I am confident that in investigating either of them they are going to find any manner of bad behavior, but that if an open-source alternative had even a whiff of plagiarism it'd have been hit with takedown notices long ago.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago

    Why would they need to use code from Twitter or even want to? They have hundreds or thousands of engineers to write their own, don’t necessarily use the same languages or tooling, and already have had IG, which works on the exact same model as Twitter, for a decade.

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

    Sorry Elon, but...

    I'm fairly sure you don't get to axe most of your staff, refuse (illegally) to pay their severance packages and then sue another company because they hired your now, ex-employees, on the grounds that it's stealing from your company...

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago

    Twitter is apparently also struggling to pay for all the individual arbitration claims they forced their ex-employees to engage in rather than a class action, yet now they want to take on a lawsuit against Facebook? Do they honestly think they can come out ahead here?

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

    Yaccarino's post makes me want to retch. What a load of quasi-inspirational, self-aggrandizing, suffocatingly corporate trash.

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

    Figured I'd read it to see what you're talking about.

    1. watch the tweet load, while it reads "view on Twitter"
    2. "[...] And that's irreplaceable. This... Show more"
    3. watch bird for three seconds
    4. watch balls spinning for seven seconds
    5. No, I do not want to accept your cookies.
    6. No, I do not want to sign in with Google.
    7. "...is your public square. We're often imitated -- but the Twitter community can never be duplicated."

    The effort and wait was worth every single one of the 15 words. Truly an irreplaceable platform.

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

    Anyone else thinks it's funny that journalist always have to explain/describe what Meta is? Be it the parent company of Facebook, Whatsapp or Instagram.

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

    I'm glad they do. Meta's name change shouldn't free them from the reputation they earned with facebook. Pin the old name to them whenever possible.

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

    I just call them Facebook, like everyone and their mother still calls Google Google. Fuck them thinking they can steal other people's name and sue them for it.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 years ago (5 children)

    Finally, things are getting good. Hope the Coliseum is still available.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago

    Remember: Musk has a bottomless money pit.

    I hope to see it run out during my lifetime.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago
    [–] 2 points 3 years ago

    The Lawyer moshpit will begin. Money is likely to be made, but fuck me these legal cases seem tiring to even be near.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago

    What a joke. Meta would not need ex-employees or “trade secrets” to create a Twitter clone.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago

    @koncertejo I need more popcorn. This saga is longer than the entire Lord of the Rings films.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago*

    Arguing a general concept such as certain limit of microblog copyrightable or trade secret is silly enough, hopefully court will throw out the lawsuit if Musky insisted to fill it.

    Unless Meta really copied codes from Twitter.

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