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Twitter is threatening to sue Meta over Threads

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Re: Twitter is threatening to sue Meta over Threads

#71

Post by losthubble »

tentacleuno wrote: post #62
ulfw wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's zero "trade secrets" (everyone knows how twitter works) and no technical secrets necessary. Threads is just instagram. It works and looks the same way. Instagram is photos with text, Threads is text with photos. The latter is not exactly rocket science to build when you already have built the former at scale and ran it successfully for years. And that's the genius of it!

How does everyone know how Twitter works? Doesn't it use proprietary code?

Well they open sourced part of it, https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm

and then I'm pretty sure Elon had a whiteboard session during his first days before firing everyone and had people explain it to him. Which he then posted on his twitter account. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1593899029531803649?s=20

Re: Twitter is threatening to sue Meta over Threads

#72

Post by Sunspark »

edavis wrote: post #28
minimaxir wrote: post #8

Between this and Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino's weird tweet about how great Twitter is ( https://twitter.com/lindayacc/status/1676965566597464065 ), the arrival of Threads is definitely an existential threat for Twitter.

> the arrival of Threads is definitely an existential threat for Twitter I had a similar thought when I joined Threads last night and within 30 seconds saw the accounts of Adam Schefter, Adrian Wojnarowski, and Shams Charania all actively posting. If you follow NFL and NBA news you'll know these names but for anybody that doesn't, these insider accounts are firmly at the center of the NFL and NBA breaking news univer…

I have no Meta corp apps installed on my phone. Not Facebook, Instagram nor Whatsapp, and Threads will join that list.

The reason for this is because Zuck and Meta corp are hostile to user privacy (and drain batteries).

Threads can't even launch in the European Union because of it.

Have fun paying $12 a month to be Threads-verified.

Thankfully day-to-day life isn't yet dependent on Meta corp as a necessity.

Re: Twitter is threatening to sue Meta over Threads

#74

Post by Sunspark »

paxys wrote: post #23
LinuxBender wrote: post #3

In a similar vain is there any risk to Lemmy or Mastodon? Did any current or former Twitter or Reddit employees contribute to Lemmy, Mastodon or the other open source alternatives to Twitter and Reddit? If so would they be a target for big corporations like Twitter and Reddit to pursue ?

Unless someone can prove there was proprietary code involved (which there wasn't) none of them are under any threat from anyone.

Agreed.

Apple lost the lawsuit against Microsoft many decades ago when they tried to stop MS from using GUI elements that were similar to Apple's.

You can't copy someone's code, but nobody can stop you from having scrollbars or avatar thumbnails or whatever in your own app.

Re: Twitter is threatening to sue Meta over Threads

#75

Post by asadotzler »

DonsDiscountGas wrote: post #25
Dig1t wrote: post #18

Despite this bone-headed move by Twitter, my question is: does this pose anti-trust problems for Meta? Meta having a monopoly on all forms of social media does seem pretty bad to me. I guess “monopoly” has a specific definition, but by having Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and the new Twitter, one company will control the majority of normal peoples’ communication online.

It seems like it should (imho), but according to current law I doubt it. We haven't really updated that for network effects. Unless they start abusing their monopoly in an anti-competitive way (eg requiring advertisers to not advertise on other social networks, just Meta) I think they're fine legally.

The bundling is enough, IMO. Meta's dominant position in social with FB/Insta/Whatsapp/etc. is indisputable, count the users, and leveraging those products (primarily IG accounts) is bundling and could be literally torn apart by the DOJ if only they had the balls they did two decades ago.

Re: Twitter is threatening to sue Meta over Threads

#76

Post by bagels »

paxys wrote: post #54
bagels wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry if I was not clear, I'm saying that without hiring any Twitter folks, the Instagram folks could easily create a Twitter clone. Instagram posts & comments could be adapted pretty easily. The question is whether the Twitter employees actually brought and used trade secrets for this effort.

The thing is these employees could have come in and directly used all the "knowledge and competency" they learned at Twitter to build Threads and it would still be 100% legal. There is a very high bar to proving whether any of it is actually a trade secret.

I think we're in agreement here. The general shape of how to build Twitter isn't a trade secret at this point. Copy-pasting source code is.

Re: Twitter is threatening to sue Meta over Threads

#77

Post by bagels »

tentacleuno wrote: post #62
ulfw wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's zero "trade secrets" (everyone knows how twitter works) and no technical secrets necessary. Threads is just instagram. It works and looks the same way. Instagram is photos with text, Threads is text with photos. The latter is not exactly rocket science to build when you already have built the former at scale and ran it successfully for years. And that's the genius of it!

How does everyone know how Twitter works? Doesn't it use proprietary code?

They have published a lot of blogs over the years, eg:

https://blog.twitter.com/engineering/en_us/topics/infrastruc...

Re: Twitter is threatening to sue Meta over Threads

#78

Post by veec_cas_tant »

rtsil wrote: post #32
rumblerock wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My question is – what trade secrets does Twitter even have that Meta didn't already have the existing infrastructure for, or competency to build themselves (probably better)?

None. There is no trade secret in building something like Twitter. Anyone on this site can probably make a clone of it. The real secrets are the massive money needed to promote the network and to pay for the infrastructure, the massive social reach to attract top posters, the massive networking effect needed to make it a must-have app. Meta already have all of those.

I’m very confident that not everyone on this site could make it work at such a massive scale

Re: Twitter is threatening to sue Meta over Threads

#79

Post by bagels »

housemusicfan wrote: post #70

The amount of "Twitter has no intellectual property I could build it in my bedroom" gaslighting going on in this discussion is unbelievable. Buried the needle.

At scale? Not in a few weeks, and not with all the features, but the core features don't seem like a stretch for a small team, without scale in a couple months.

Meta/Instagram luckily already have a large scale social network, tons of money, and tons of engineers and a codebase that deals in users and text and images already, so it's a pretty good head start.

Re: Twitter is threatening to sue Meta over Threads

#80

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

bagels wrote: post #31
rumblerock wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My question is – what trade secrets does Twitter even have that Meta didn't already have the existing infrastructure for, or competency to build themselves (probably better)?

They definitely have existing products, knowledge and competency for building a twitter clone that could be adapted for this purpose (instagram/facebook posts & comment systems). Whether they did or not is maybe the question?

the question is better phrased as, "can elon prove they did", because unless he can, they didn't, by default
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