Twitter suspends Koo's handle

Twitter’s owner has suspended the account of Twitter’s competitor and homegrown microblogging platform Koo.

On Friday, December 16, 2022, Koo’s eminence handle @kooeminence got suspended because of “violations of Twitter guidelines.”

Along with Koo’s handle, the official Twitter account of Mastodon also got blocked. Twitter also blocked all the outbound links to Mastodon.

Mayank Bidawatka, Koo’s co-founder wrote on Twitter One of the Koo Twitter handles just got banned. For what? Because we compete with Twitter? So? Mastodon also got blocked today. How is this free speech and what world are we living in?’

Indian microblogging platform’s co-founder added “I forgot. There’s more! - Banning Mastodon account. - Not allowing mastodon links saying it’s unsafe. - Banning Koo’s eminence handle. I mean seriously. How much more control does the guy need?”

This news came a day after Elon Musk suspended the accounts of prominent CNN, Washington Post and New York Times journalists for tracking his private jet and posting his locations publicly on the microblogging platform. The accounts were restored after he faced strong criticism from people, government officials and other journalists.

In a series of Tweets, Koo’s co-founder replied to Elon Musk’s decisions “1. Posting publicly available info isn’t doing. Why shoot the messenger? 2. Journalists that posted links did nothing wrong. Posting a link to publicly available info isn’t doing the way posting a link to an online article isn’t plagiarism,” the Koo co-founder said.

“3. Leaving spaces without answering journalists is bad. 4. Creating policies out of thin air to suit yourself is worse. 5. Changing your stance every other day is inconsistent. 6. Posting a video of an unknown car on Twitter with the car plate showing - how’s that allowed? 7. Killing spaces overnight to control conversations. The list is endless. This isn’t democracy. This is a strong need to exercise power & control. And shouldn’t be allowed. We need to speak up!”

Aprameya Radhakrishna, CEO and co-founder of Koo tweeted: “One of the Koo handles on Twitter just got banned. For what? Because we compete with Twitter? So? Mastodon also got blocked today. How is this free speech and what world are we living in?”

Many Indian users uninstalled Twitter shifted to Koo who were not using Koo before, after the account of Twitter’s Indian rival was taken down. People criticised Elon Musk for this action on Koo as well as on Twitter and #Elonmusk became trending on Koo.

These actions by Elon Musk show how insecure he is about the growth of Twitter’s competitors. It should be noted that Koo and Mastodon both are the top alternatives of Twitter and are nowhere near it in terms of active users, downloads or revenue.

According to Statista, the number of global monetizable daily active users (mDAU) on Twitter is around 237.8 million whereas the Indian microblogging site Koo has over 4 million active users and that Mastodon is around 2.7 million.

Elon Musk acknowledges the potential of Koo. He would be surprised at how well the app performed after two days of launch in Brazil. Koo successfully attracted several celebrities and politicians from India, Brazil and other countries.

Ryan Hoover, the founder of Product Hunt is also on Koo and actively uses the microblogging platform. Screenshot of Ryan Hoover's profile on Koo

Koo has performed well in India and the international market and it is the best alternative to Twitter. Koo is also the second largest microblogging platform after Twitter.