Koo: Migrate tweet history, escape ‘intellectual assassination’

NEW DELHI: Koo - the Made-in-India rival of Twitter - has offered to migrate all historic tweets of any Twitter user willing to shift to its platform that will continue to not charge users for verification badge, its co-founder and CEO Aprameya Radhakrishna said.

Since taking over Twitter in a $44 billion deal in October, Elon Musk has sacked its employees, overhauled its moderation policies, put a price for account verification, and restored previously banned accounts including that of former US President Donald Trump.

In recent days, he suspended the accounts of several prominent journalists without warning who had been covering him, but had to reinstate the accounts following strong criticism from government officials, journalist organisations, and advocacy groups.

Koo, which allows users to express views in Indian languages, has already crossed 50 million downloads and is now flying into the rival’s nest, starting a campaign to woo Twitter users, offering self-verification and a free-of-cost yellow verification tag for eminent persons.

And now, it has offered to migrate any tweet, excluding replies, likes or resharing of someone else’s tweet, to Koo to escape “intellectual assassination” resulting from Twitter account suspension, he said.

“A lot has happened in the 45 odd days since the world’s town square became one man’s megaphone,” Radhakrishna said, noting Twitter is now a “personal property of the world’s smartest and richest man”.

The debacle of suspension of accounts of several prominent journalists, including reporters from The New York Times, CNN, and The Washington Post, and the subsequent reinstation, brings sharp focus on a very important point especially for journalists and creative folks, he said.

“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 said.

And all this because of a new rule that offers no one any clarity. “There is just a blank screen to show for all the intellectual hard work of several years,” he said.

Radhakrishna said Koo has devised a simple and elegant solution to escape 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 original tweets will get migrated to Koo, he said. Also, all accounts that the migrating user may be following on Twitter, and if available on Koo, can be followed by a simple click.

However, followers of the migrating Twitter user will not get migrated unless they also shift to Koo. “You can look up your friends and followers on Koo and start engaging with them,” he said.

Koo believes in enabling trustworthy and healthy conversations between people. Earlier this year, it offered voluntary self-verification free of charge and more than 1,25,000 Indians have availed of this right, he said.

“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 $44 billion, billionaire’s toy,” he said.