It was a very good thing for free speech when Elon Musk took over Twitter.

That very freedom drove the liberals mad and many said they were going to flee to other venues. Yet they stayed and still pontificated on Twitter.

But it stood to reason that the powers that be would try to take on Musk. They don’t like to lose control of the narrative.

Now, Mark Zuckerberg’s challenge to Twitter — “Threads” — just launched on Wednesday, and he claimed by the afternoon that he had 30 million sign-ups.

Jack Dorsey immediately noted they were going to collect all kinds of data on you and that “All your Threads are belong [sic] to us.”

Yeah

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 4, 2023

Given what we’ve seen in the past, don’t expect anything to be private.

The app also shared several similarities with Twitter as it allows users to make posts that are up to 500 characters long and share that are up to five minutes long. Users can also post links, photos and videos, which are typical uses for social media apps.

Threads also features a central feed that includes posts from people they follow, nearly the exact same as Twitter’s design. The app also recommends content from other users and allows turning on notifications for specific users, both are also features on Twitter.

Musk had a little fun joining in the mocking of the Threads launch, including that Threads was mostly things copied and pasted from Twitter.

😂

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 6, 2023

😂

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 6, 2023

But he also had a few serious things to say about what Zuckerberg was doing. Twitter is threatening to sue Meta over “systematic, willful and unlawful misappropriation” of Twitter’s trade secrets and intellectual property (IP), as well as scraping of Twitter’s data. They laid it all out in a cease-and-desist letter sent from Twitter’s lawyer, Alex Spiro.

The below is a leak of the letter sent by Spiro to Meta, as reported by @semafor.

The allegations centre on trade secrets shared by ex-Twitter employees hired by Meta, but also hints that Meta may have been scraping Twitter’s data in violation of the terms of service. pic.twitter.com/Lo6usdsM7Q

— T(w)itter Daily News  (@TitterDaily) July 6, 2023

Elon confirmed the threat to sue if they didn’t stop.

Competition is fine, cheating is not

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 6, 2023

“Competition is fine, cheating is not,” Musk declared.

There was already censoring underway on Threads, and some commentators were calling it out. Journalist Michael Shellenberger pointed it out and said they weren’t offering any avenue for appeal (unlike Twitter).

Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Meta’s new app, Threads, has promised users a better experience than Twitter, but he is censoring users and offering no avenue for appeal. pic.twitter.com/kAHbKGFgI0

— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) July 6, 2023

Another onehttps://t.co/3D0HWt1UNX

— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) July 6, 2023

They were also posting things like this on people’s accounts to discourage people who might follow them.

FoxNews showing how Zuck’s new app “Threads” is already censoring me & other conservatives on day 1

This is the warning that pops up when you try to follow me there

Why does Meta treat 74+ million Americans like 2nd class citizens? pic.twitter.com/k9cVqg0ssF

— DC_Draino (@DC_Draino) July 6, 2023

Zuck the lizard’s “Threads app” twitter rip-off is already actively censoring accounts before they’ve even been followed. pic.twitter.com/oPT8T97dvr

— Alex Armstrong (@alexharmstrong) July 6, 2023

They were also allegedly nuking threads that posted factual information that they didn’t like.

That was quick pic.twitter.com/ka7fyAeu6j

— shaneyyricch (@shaneyyricch) July 6, 2023

They think they can kill Twitter by undercutting it, but this sounds like a big fail. If you want to be censored and data mined, then I guess it’s a good thing to go there. But I’m suspecting that it isn’t going to do very well with this approach, except maybe for just the liberals who want to hear themselves in a censored echo chamber.