What precisely is Koo? What is its objective?
Koo is a related platform as Twitter exactly where customers can express their opinions, although it is getting marketed as India’s answer to Twitter for non-English customers. Aprameya Radhakrishna is the developer, co-founder and CEO of Koo and launched the app in March 2020.
One of the prominent variations amongst Koo and Twitter is that the indigenous app presents services in numerous nearby languages permitting quite a few Indians to use the platform with ease. The truth that only 10 per cent Indians are vocal in English has been the promoting point for the application.
Since a big quantity of Indian population does not speak English, Koo is attempting “to make the voice of these Indians heard. They can now participate on the internet in their mother tongue by listening to the views of some of the sharpest Indian minds and also speak their mind by sharing their thoughts.”
Twitter’s loss is Koo’s achieve?
Koo’s recognition surge has come at a time when the government of India has openly expressed its displeasure with Twitter on late compliance of its emergency orders to eliminate the hashtag “farmer genocide” and all connected content from its platform.
The government had asked Twitter to eliminate more than 1,000 accounts alleging that these accounts had been spreading misinformation along with some provocative content about the farmers’ protest. However, Twitter was late to comply, and also, it took its personal independent stand (in some circumstances) on the problem saying it was also attempting to shield freedom of expression. Though it removed more than 500 accounts and withheld a portion of accounts soon after the government’s directive, it did not, for instance, eliminate accounts belonging to journalists, media entities, activists, and politicians.
Many government officials and ministry internet sites which includes the account of Minister of Electronics and IT Ravi Shankar Prasad as nicely as Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) have joined Koo. This can be regarded as as the government’s push for folks to use the indigenous app.
Koo app: privacy issues, China connection
French cybersecurity researcher Robert Baptiste, who also goes by the alias Elliot Alderson on Twitter, has highlighted that the app is leaking user info. Baptiste had earlier pointed out vulnerabilities in the Aadhaar technique along with safety bugs and vulnerabilities in other tech services. On Wednesday, he took to Twitter and stated that Koo had loopholes that can lead to leaking of individual information which includes e-mail, name, DOB, marital status, gender. This signifies that there was a possibility of information leakage of millions of customers which includes the Indian government departments who had been working with the platform.
Also Read: Twitter’s desi option Koo gets $4.1M from 3one4 Capital, Accel, Kalaari, Blume Ventures, others
Meanwhile, some Chinese connection to this app has also surfaced. A Chinese business named Shunwei (which is connected to Xiaomi and is a venture capital fund investing in begin-ups), has also invested in Koo. However, Shunwei will now be exiting the business and will be promoting its stake, producing Koo a total Indian entity. This has been confirmed by the Koo co-founder.