Koo is full of hatred

New Delhi — In early February, politicians from India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party began signing up for a social network that hardly anyone has heard of.

The Minister of Commerce of India said: “I’m on Koo now Published Attracted nearly 10 million followers on Twitter. “Contact me on this Indian microblogging platform for real-time, exciting and exclusive updates.” According to data from Sensor Tower, an app analytics company, millions of people (most of whom are BJP supporters) are close behind , Twitter clones were immediately touted. In 10 days at the beginning of this month, more than 2 million people installed Twitter.

The timing is not accidental.For several days, the Indian government has been engaged in a fierce tug-of-war with Twitter, which violates legal orders. Blockage Criticisms of the Indian nationalist government in India, including those belonging to journalists and investigative news magazines.In response, India’s IT department being threatened Send Twitter officials to jail. During the confrontation, government officials advocated that Mr. Gu should be a nationalist choice without being influenced by the United States.

The site calls itself “The voice of India in the Indian language“Almost exactly the same as Twitter, except that the number of characters in “Koos” is limited to 400 characters, the “hot topics” part is full of government propaganda, and the logo is a yellow rather than blue bird.

What’s more disturbing is that in the ancient town, the Hindu supremacy frenzy rages, driven by the strongest supporters of the Indian government, and the free flow of hate speech against Muslims, India’s largest ethnic minority.

A BJP party worker issued a poll asking followers to choose from four labels that slandered Muslims, including “anti-national” and “jihadist dogs.” His resume stated that he taught at the Indian Institute of Technology (a top engineering school whose graduates are coveted by Silicon Valley), and he shared a hateful cartoon depicting Muslim men as members of a bloodthirsty mob. Some shared conspiracy theories about Muslims spitting in people’s food to spread diseases, while others shared news reports about crimes committed by people named after Muslims to demonize entire religions. One person warned Muslims not to follow him and called them slander. “I hate [them],” one of his articles said.

As the global internet FragmentsAnd mainstream platforms such as Facebook and Twitter Confrontation with the nation-state with Suitably To combat hate speech, alternatives to nationalism have sprung up, and experts say this is a growing trend.

Harvard Law School lecturer Evelyn Dujek (Evelyn douek) said: “This content is to find a new home.” He told BuzzFeed News. She said that hate speech, disinformation, harassment and incitement that mainstream platforms have been plagued for years are particularly problematic on platforms such as Koo, because these sites are less censored. Douek said: “These problems will eventually appear on every platform, but with the proliferation of these choices, the attention and pressure on them may be greatly reduced. This may also give the global Internet a voice and a voice on national platforms. A completely alternative dialogue will be held in parallel.”

Koo’s co-founder and CEO Aprameya Radhakrishna told BuzzFeed News that his website is not intended to be a tool of hate or designed as an echo chamber of ideology.

He said: “You can’t review everything on a large scale.”

Radhakrishna is an entrepreneur in Bangalore. He sold a ride-hailing service startup to India’s Uber competitor Ola for $200 million in 2015. He launched Koo in March last year. Earlier this month, following the surge in downloads, the company raised funds. US$4.1 million From investors, including former Infosys co-founder Mohandas Pai (voice supporter of the Modi government).

Radhakrishna said that Koo does not have a moderate team. Instead, the platform relies on people to flag content that they think is problematic. A team will only look at what Radhakrishna calls “exceptions”.

Radha Krishna said: “Even Facebook and Twitter are still trying to control,”. “We are a company with a history of 10 months. We are formulating policies.” He added that he believes that expressing ideas is not a problem until it leads to violence.

He said: “We will not act just because we like it.” “It will be taken in accordance with the land law.”

A small section hidden in the app’s terms and conditions is titled “Rules and Behavior”, which prohibits people from posting “infringement of the privacy of others”, “hate”, “racial” or “racial discrimination” or “derogatory” content.

in spite of Compare For Parler, he is a conservative replacement for Twitter and Facebook in the US, and Radhakrishna insists that his application is apolitical. He said: “We hope that anyone who wants to adopt the platform will like it.” Politics is not the only aspect of India. The platform can be used to express and express anything. “

More than ten Indian government departments Use now o Earlier this month, the IT department of the government threatened to imprison Twitter officials. The department issued a statement on Koo expressing dissatisfaction with Twitter’s working hours, and then issued the same statement on Twitter .

Inside Twitter, India is one of the fastest-growing global markets in India, and employees have been following Koo. An employee who asked not to be named told BuzzFeed News: “This must be within our radar range.” “I don’t know if this is a threat yet, but we are observing it.”

Radhakrishna (Radhakrishna) said that the company’s local production provides it with advantages. He said: “We are an Indian company and we will formulate our behavior around the Indian background.” “This will be better than international companies because they are also guided by their domestic policies.”

When asked what he meant by “Indian background”, Radha Krishna said he did not have any specific examples. He said: “I didn’t deal with any actual situation.”