Indian government begins shift to social network Koo

Twitter has seen friction with the government escalate, including over its failure to meet a May 25 deadline for appointing compliance and grievance officers

Twitter is fast losing its position as a favoured communications tool for many Indian government departments and ministers keen to promote home-grown social network Koo while the U.S. firm comes under fire for non-compliance with India’s laws.

The most high-profile example includes India’s new IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw. Taking office this month, he opened a new Koo account and soon after announced a review of social media firms’ compliance with strict new rules – the information was not posted to his 258,000 followers on Twitter.

The idea is to create an alternative to Twitter, said one government official in media relations, declining to be identified as he was not authorised to speak on the matter.

That sentiment is shared by other ministers who are irked by what they see as a defiant Twitter, a senior person in the party’s IT department told Reuters.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration first took offence with the U.S. firm in February when it refused to fully comply with an order to take down accounts and posts accused of spreading misinformation about farmers protests. Twitter argued some requests were not in line with Indian law.

That dispute saw some ministers promote Koo, which unlike Twitter also accommodates content in eight Indian languages, and its downloads surged 10-fold in two days to more than 3 million. Subscriber numbers for the 16-month old platform have since grown to 7 million.

Twitter, which has about 17.5 million users in India, has only seen friction with the government escalate, including over its failure to meet a May 25 deadline for installing compliance and grievance officers mandated under the new social media rules. It has since filled two of the three positions.

It is also now the subject of five police investigations in different parts of India that allege the U.S. company has abused its platform.

Twitter declined to comment on the Indian government’s use of Koo but said it works directly with various ministries and authorities, playing a critical role in disaster management amid the pandemic.

These institutions and their members seek our strategic counsel to use the power of Twitter by way of training, mobilising resources, and driving public engagement initiatives, a spokesperson said.