This photo, taken in New York, Thursday, July 6, 2023, shows Meta’s new app Threads. Meta unveiled the app to rival Twitter, targeting users looking for an alternative to the social media platform owned — and frequently changed — by Elon Musk. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

NEW YORK (AP) — Twitter has threatened legal action against Meta over its new text-based app called Threads. The offering launched this week as a rival to Elon Musk’s social media platform and has drawn tens of millions of users. In a letter Wednesday to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, an attorney for Twitter accused Meta of unlawfully using Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property by hiring former Twitter employees to create a “copycat” app. The move ramps up the tensions between the social media giants as Threads targets people seeking out Twitter alternatives amid unpopular changes Musk has made to the platform. A Meta spokesperson wrote on Threads that “no one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee.”