'Copycat': Musk pokes fun at Threads after platform imposes rate limit on user activity

A little more than ten days after its launch, Meta-owned Threads is now facing its first major hurdle. Instagram headAdam Mosseri on Monday announced that the platform was implementing rate limits on Threads, akin to the one imposed by Twitter earlier this month. The announcement, however, provided the ammo to Twitter boss Elon Musk, who took the opportunity and poked fun at the newly-launched platform.

"Spam attacks have picked up so we're going to have to get tighter on things like rate limits, which is going to mean more unintentionally limiting active people ( false positives). If you get caught up those protections let us know," Mosseri wrote.

The announcement went viral, allowing Twitter boss Elon Musk to take a shot once again at the Mark Zuckerberg-owned company. Responding to a screenshot of Mosseri's statement, Musk tweeted "Lmaooo" and “Copy” with a cat emoji, insinuating that Threads was a copycat platform of Twitter.

Twitter imposed rate limit first

Notably, the announcement by Threads comes weeks after Musk made a similar announcementregarding the implementation of rate limits on its platform. At the time, Musk said the decision was taken to stop data scraping activities by emerging AI startups that were using Twitter to train their models.

Initially, the rate limit was set at6,000 for paying users and 600 for non-paying users.However, the limit has since been increased, with the platform alsoremovingthe requirement of logging in to view the tweets.

Musk vs Zuckerberg

Musk and Zuckerberg have been at each other's throats ever since the former proposed the idea of a cage fight. The rivalry has only intensified after Meta launched Threads, forcingMusk and his team to issue a legal threat to Zuckerberg.

In a letter addressed to the Meta boss, Twitter's lawyer Alex Spiro warned that the company intends to sue Meta if it does not cease using Twitter's trade secrets and confidential information, reports Reuters.

The letter alleged that Meta has hired former Twitter employees who possess confidential information about the microblogging site."Twitter intends to strictly enforce its intellectual property rights, and demands that Meta take immediate steps to stop using any Twitter trade secrets or other highly confidential information," Spiro wrote in the letter.

Threads, dubbed a Twitter killer by a significant portion of the internet community, had an impressive opening but since then, the platform has seen its popularity take a dip. As per data, both active users and time spent on the app - two major metrics to gauge a platform's popularity, were down significantly.

(With inputs from agencies)

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