‘From India, for the world’: Centre replies to Twitter as officials switch to ‘Koo’ app

New Delhi: Amid the ongoing controversy with the micro-blogging platform Twitter, several Central government officials have started shifting towards the homegrown alternative – the Koo app.

Union Ministers including Ravi Shankar Prasad, Piyush Goyal and Smriti Irani have already joined the Koo platform.

“I am now on Koo. Connect with me on this Indian micro-blogging platform for real-time, exciting and exclusive updates. Let us exchange our thoughts and ideas on Koo,” said Union Minister Piyush Goyal.

I am now on Koo.

Connect with me on this Indian micro-blogging platform for real-time, exciting and exclusive updates.

Let us exchange our thoughts and ideas on Koo.

Join me: https://t.co/zIL6YI0epM pic.twitter.com/REGioTdMfm

— Piyush Goyal (@PiyushGoyal) February 9, 2021

NITI Aayog, which serves as the ‘Think Tank’ of the Government, also joined the platform and said, “From India; For the world!”

From India; For the world! #NITIAayog is excited to be a part of the #KooApp, a winner in the Social category of the #AatmanirbharBharat App Innovation Challenge!

Listen to interesting thoughts by nitiaayog on the app – https://t.co/W6h1tMViQ8

स्वागत नहीं करोगे हमारा?

— NITI Aayog (@NITIAayog) February 9, 2021

Earlier when the Capitol Hill riots took place in the United States, the micro-blogging platform had suspended the then US President Donald Trump’s Twitter account, however, following the violence in India on January 26, the tweets on the incident were called as the ‘freedom of expression’ by Twitter.

Koo, which is one of the winners in the ‘Social category’ of the ‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge’, has reportedly witnessed a 10-fold surge in its downloads in the past two days. 

This comes in the backdrop of Centre-Twitter controversy. Centre had issued a notice to Twitter ordering the social network company to remove more than 1,000 accounts related to the farmers’ protest. 

Defending its policies, Twitter also issued a statement on Wednesday and said that transparency is the foundation for promoting healthy public conversation.

Twitter said, “Following the reports of violence in recent weeks, we’re sharing a granular update on our proactive efforts to enforce our rules and defend our principles in India.”

It added, “We believe transparency is the foundation for promoting healthy public conversation on Twitter and to earn trust. It is critical that people understand our approach to content moderation and how we engage with governments around the world, and that we are transparent about the consequences and the results of this work. Our Transparency Report and Lumen continue to be the places to go to observe trends in the requests governments make of us, and to assess how we operate globally.”

Notably, Koo allows users to post multimedia content, including audio clips. On the platform, a text post is restricted to 400 characters and the service currently supports over four Indian languages, including Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, and Kannada.

Like Twitter, Koo’s logo is also a bird, but yellow in colour.