Musk Gets a Taste of His Own Medicine?
Musk is seriously upset with Zuckerberg’s latest app, Threads, threatening to sue it. However, it seems like he is reaping exactly what he sows.
Musk is not exactly in the mood.
The CEO of Tesla and owner of Twitter has announced that he plans to take Meta to court for employing former Twitter employees who helped create Threads. Alex Spiro, Musk’s attorney, reportedly wrote a letter to Facebook parent Meta on Wednesday, in which he accused it of “systematic” and “unlawful misappropriation” of trade secrets. He added that Meta’s Twitter, which indeed resembles Twitter, was built by former Twitter employees who received the task of developing a “copycat” app.
Later, to reiterate his point, Musk added, "Competition is fine; cheating is not".
The internet immediately reacted to the news with both memes and comments.
Among them, the most widely mentioned comment is that Musk has no one to blame but himself. In 2022, when he bought the social media behemoth, he dismissed many people, also publicly calling them useless. After that, he tweeted what appears to be a semi-sarcastic tweet: “I would like to apologize for firing these geniuses. Their immense talent will no doubt be of great use elsewhere.”
In a BBC interview in 2023, he also admitted to laying off more than 6,000 people at Twitter since taking over the company.
Whether or not these people have indeed helped create the new platform is still being determined. Meta spokesperson Andy Stone recently claimed "no one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee - that's just not a thing."
Besides, to win the case against Meta, Musk’s legal team would have to prove that it owns intellectual property, for example, programming code.
Meanwhile, some big names on Twitter, like horror writer Stephen King, has already commented on the situation, saying, “Musk vs. Zuckerberg reminds me of what Oscar Wilde had to say about fox hunting: the unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible. In response, Musk tweeted a sarcastic response: “In the spirit of self-awareness, what are you?”
Stephen King’s tweet. Source: Stephen King’s Twitter handle
Meanwhile, others took to the memeverse and infographics to show their stance on the subject. For example, Transfermarkt said that instead of buying Twitter for $44 billion, he could have bought 15 top football clubs in the world. This includes FC Barcelona, Real Madrid, and Bayern, among others.
Transfermarkt infographic. Source: Twitter
Others posted memes, showing the general level of annoyance with Musk’s behavior, saying, “I don’t care if Mark Zuckerberg wins;, I just need Elon Musk to lose.”
A meme about Musk and Zuckerberg. Source: ifunny.co
Zuckerberg also felt like trolling Musk, tweeting the famous Spiderman meme with clones of Spiderman pointing at each other.
Mark Zuckerberg’s tweet. Source: Mark Zuckerberg’s Twitter
Previously, GNcrypto reported that Musk’s Dogecoin legal team saw a shuffle.