Over the weekend, Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, and Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, engaged in a heated exchange, exchanging jabs online after Musk expressed his intention to take legal action against Meta’s newly launched Threads platform.
The ongoing rivalry between these tech giants intensified following the recent release of Threads by Meta, sparking several days of online disputes between Musk and Zuckerberg. The confrontation reached its peak on Sunday when Wendy’s official account, using the Threads app, suggested that Zuckerberg should venture into space to purposely provoke Musk, likely alluding to Musk’s space exploration company, SpaceX.
In response to Wendy’s remark, the account directed at Zuckerberg, saying, “Hey @zuck, you should go to space just to really make him mad lol.” Zuckerberg’s response consisted of a laughing emoji.
@wendys • hey @zuck, you should go to space just to really make him mad lol • Threads
The interaction was captured in a screenshot and subsequently posted on Twitter by a user who criticized Zuckerberg for safeguarding “brand speech” while applauding Musk for defending “free speech.” Musk took notice of the tweet, leading the tech billionaire to respond with a concise four-word statement.
“Musk labeled Zuckerberg as a ‘cuck’.”
Zuck is a cuck
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 9, 2023
Meta’s recently launched Threads app, which has been nicknamed the “Twitter Killer,” aims to capture a portion of Twitter’s microblogging market and is regarded as a direct challenge to Twitter, which Musk acquired for $44 billion in October 2022. Musk has accused Zuckerberg of developing a “copycat” application and has issued a legal threat against the platform. The online dispute escalated when Musk proposed a cage match to Zuckerberg. In response, Zuckerberg shared Musk’s invitation on Instagram with the comment, “Send Me Location.”
Since its debut, Musk has dismissed the Threads app as merely “Instagram minus pics” and has alleged that Meta engaged in “systematic, intentional, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property” in a cease and desist letter sent by Twitter’s attorney, Alex Spiro, to Meta.
Musk tweeted at one point, stating, “Competition is acceptable, but cheating is not.”
Zuckerberg has not publicly addressed the potential lawsuit but has been engaging in his own subtle taunting of Musk on Threads by responding to posts with the word “concerning” accompanied by a laughing emoji—seemingly mocking Musk’s tendency to reply with a single word on Twitter.
— Mark Zuckerberg (@finkd) July 6, 2023
On the day the Threads app was launched, Zuckerberg broke his decade-long Twitter silence and tweeted for the first time. His tweet consisted solely of a Spider-Man meme depicting the character pointing at another Spider-Man, which many interpreted as a direct jab at his Twitter competitor.
