Koo — the Made-in-India rival of Twitter — has supplied emigrate all historic tweets of any Twitter consumer keen to shift to its platform that can proceed to not cost customers for verification badge, its co-founder and CEO Aprameya Radhakrishna mentioned.
Since taking up Twitter in a USD 44 billion deal in October, Elon Musk has sacked its workers, overhauled its moderation insurance policies, put a value for account verification, and restored beforehand banned accounts together with that of former US President Donald Trump.
In current days, he suspended the accounts of a number of outstanding journalists with out warning who had been masking him, however needed to reinstate the accounts following robust criticism from authorities officers, journalist organisations, and advocacy teams.
Koo, which permits customers to specific views in Indian languages, has already crossed 50 million downloads and is now flying into the rival’s nest, beginning a marketing campaign to woo Twitter customers, providing self-verification and a free-of-cost yellow verification tag for eminent individuals.
And now, it has supplied emigrate any tweet, excluding replies, likes or resharing of another person’s tweet, to Koo to flee “intellectual assassination” ensuing from Twitter account suspension, he mentioned.
“A lot has happened in the 45 odd days since the world’s town square became one man’s megaphone,” Radhakrishna informed PTI saying Twitter is now a “personal property of the world’s smartest and richest man”.
The debacle of suspension of accounts of a number of outstanding journalists, together with reporters from The New York Times, CNN, and The Washington Post, and the following reinstation, brings sharp concentrate on an important level particularly for journalists and artistic people, he mentioned.
“If you are someone who speaks their mind and engages with others in discussion and debate – a suspension essentially means that you lose access to years of creativity, ideas, connections and insights,” he mentioned.
And all this as a result of a brand new rule got here in yesterday and noone understands it absolutely. “There is just a blank screen to show for all the intellectual hard work of several years,” he mentioned.
Radhakrishna mentioned Koo has devised a easy and stylish answer to flee this “blackhole”. “Just migrate to Koo!” “Within the settings, a simple and elegant button allows you to migrate all your Tweets to Koo.”
“Just click on the migrate button, follow the simple on screen instructions and all your tweets are ported to your Koo account seamlessly.”
All historic authentic tweets will get migrated to Koo, he mentioned. Also, all accounts that the migrating consumer could also be following on Twitter, and if out there on Koo, might be adopted by a easy click on.
However, followers of the migrating Twitter consumer is not going to get migrated except additionally they shift to Koo. “You can look up your friends and followers on Koo and start engaging with them,” he mentioned.
Koo believes in enabling reliable and wholesome conversations between folks. Earlier this 12 months, it supplied voluntary self-verification freed from cost and greater than 1,25,000 Indians have availed of this proper, he mentioned.
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“It is unimaginable that in this day and age, one man has the ability to wipe out your digital existence and remove all traces of your creativity. History and creativity cannot be held hostage to a USD 44 billion, billionaire’s toy,” he mentioned.
” Koo provides everyone with an equal opportunity to express themselves in a language of choice and preserve their thoughts and opinions for all times to come. So go ahead, escape Twitter and engage in a platform that truly sets you free.”
Serial entrepreneur Radhakrishna, recognized for constructing ride-sharing firm TaxiForSure (which was acquired by Ola for USD 200 million in 2015), began Koo — a language-focused microblogging platform — in early 2020.
It was meant to be a homegrown, hyperlocal various to Twitter. He believes that eminence is a recognition of the affect, stature, achievements, skills, or skilled standing of an individual and Koo awards a Yellow Tick towards consumer profiles primarily based on clear, pre-defined standards which mirror regional ethos and achievements.
The Koo Eminence Tick, he mentioned, can’t be bought and is granted endlessly. Musk, who considers himself a “free speech absolutist”, noticed his electrical automobile maker Tesla’s shares slumping by 4.7 per cent on Friday, posting their worst weekly loss since March 2020, following the suspension of journalist accounts.
They have been restored on Saturday. Also on Friday, Twitter suspended an official account belonging to Koo, which had been arrange for consumer queries. Visiting @kooeminence now reveals that the account has been suspended, and its tweets are not seen.
Mayank Bidawatka, Koo co-founder, took to Twitter to specific the lack of the account, emphasising that his microblogging platform is the perfect various to Twitter.
“I’ve said this before. We run Koo and the journalists should just migrate. Migrate tools are available. Koo is the best alternative to Twitter. This place is what it is because of you and millions of other users like us.”
He additionally questioned the rationale behind the suspension, saying ?This is not democracy. This is a robust have to train energy & management. And should not be allowed. We want to talk up!”
Twitter additionally is obstructing customers from tweeting hyperlinks to some servers of Mastodon – one other main competitor to Twitter.
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“Not allowing mastodon links saying it’s unsafe. – Banning Koo’s eminence handle. I mean seriously. How much more control does the guy need?” Bidawatka wrote.
He tweeted, “We’ve never created policies out of thin air. Everything is user focused and transparent. It’s the most inclusive platform. It’s time to take action instead of just discussing.”
To PTI, Radhakrishna mentioned Koo can also be an unwitting casualty of 1 man’s mission and its eminence account was suspended for circumventing Twitter’s coverage for evading bans.
“Mastodon has also faced a similar fate for a vague crime which did not exist till a couple of days back,” he mentioned.
Bidawatka in a sequence of tweets, questioned the rationale behind suspending the @kooeminence account, which was arrange only some days in the past for queries posted by celebrities and VIPs trying to make use of the Indian social media platform.
“Posting publicly available info isn’t doxxing. Why shoot the messenger? Journalists that posted links did nothing wrong. Posting a link to publicly available info isn’t doxxing the way posting a link to an online article isn’t plagiarism,” the Koo co-founder mentioned.
“And guess what! Suddenly. Almost suddenly #ElonIsDestroyingTwitter has been removed from the trending section. Twitter is a publisher. Not a platform anymore!” he added.