India Vs Twitter War Escalates: Time to prioritise Koo now?

In a major showdown between Government of India and Twitter, the social media giant has been given ‘one last notice’ to comply to new IT rules or ‘face consequences’. The notice served by the Indian government to Twitter on Saturday read that Twitter Inc is given one last notice to immediately comply with the rules or face consequences as per the IT act and other penal laws of India. 

The warning came after Twitter went ahead to remove Vice President V Venkaiah Naidu’s ‘blue tick’ verification from his personal handle along with RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat. 

Other occasions when Twitter has irked the Indian government include Twitter’s hesitancy in responding to GOI’s request of blocking, toolkit that was shared during farmers protest, misuse of the platform for planning string social media campaigns, wrong display of geolocation of certain areas of Ladakh as part of China and taking several days to rectify the mistake, promoting vaccine hesitancy, flagged some posts of a BJP spokesperson as manipulated media and stating that new it rules have elements that could inhibit free speech. 

In light of these situations, it only seems viable to shift to Indian alternatives like Koo, which are slowing and steadily building its ground and gaining support from the government. Speaking to NewsX on removal of Vice President V Venkaiah Naidu’s ‘blue tick’ verification on Twitter, Koo Founder Aprameya Radhakrishna said “I can’t comment on what other organisations do but i can let you know that on Koo, we want to be a reflection of what the society already is. We don’t want to be defining who is eminent or not. On Koo, the yellow verification tick that we give is a reflection of the eminence that is already there in the society for that person. Activity or inactivity on Koo does not make somebody eminent or not. If they are already eminent on Koo and are an eminent personality, then the verification tick remains as long as the account remains on the platform.”