Modi government hits back at Twitter – on Koo

Hours after Twitter issued a statement expressing its concerns about a "potential threat" to freedom of expression in India, the Modi government delivered its response. In a statement, the ministry of electronics and IT accused Twitter of attempting to "dictate its terms to the world's largest democracy".

It also condemned the statement as "baseless, false and an attempt to defame India to hide its own follies".

In a masterstroke, the government response first appeared not on Twitter, but on Koo.

The same press release appeared only later on the ministry's Twitter handle.

What is Koo, you might ask, understandably confused. Koo is India's homegrown Twitter clone, an app launched in 2020 by a pair of startup veterans, and backed by both political and financial capital from the establishment.

We first really heard about it earlier this year when the Indian government asked Twitter India to censor hundreds of accounts that were tweeting about the farmer protests. Twitter initially complied, but then walked back, unblocking most of the accounts. In the battle between the government and Twitter, Koo popped up as an atmanirbhar alternative.

Read all about it in the link below.