Why would it be illegal? A cease and desist is just a fancy letter saying do what we want or else we’ll go crying to a judge. If the original dev hasn’t done anything wrong (I’m not familiar with the project but I’d still say that’s highly likely to be the case) then there’s nothing to worry about. So make all the clones you want, and watch a dumbass company Streisand itself
How they think this is gonna go: “Haha, now that we got all those youngins off the ticktoks they have to listen to us and believe what we tell them”
How it’s really gonna go: “JUNIOR GET THE FUCK IN HERE! I need to see the new Trump meme from aunt Karen, why the hell does my facebook have ‘blocked in the state of Florida’ all over it? What’d you do to it?”