In the ongoing spat between Twitter and the Indian Government, can an alternative emerge?
As Twitter and its management, both global and local, confront the Indian Government, the American social network has taken a bizarre stand. It refuses to comply with the order in toto, arguing that it is against the law of the land, though it partially acceded to it. Twitter, in a blog post, said it has not blocked accounts consisting of “news media entities, journalists, activists and politicians” as doing so “would violate their fundamental right to free expression”. However, it reportedly blocked Rajya Sabha MP and Samajwadi Party leader Chaudhary Sukhram Singh Yadav’s account, in what is among the most high-profile blockings by the platform in the country so far. The microblogging site earlier partially complied with the Government’s order to curb the spread of alleged misinformation and inflammatory content around the farmers’ protest. The orders could well be illegal, but that is for the courts rather than the Twitter management to decide. Standing up to the Government in a country that is vital for your success is something that should be done with extreme trepidation, but Twitter executives apparently believe that they are fighting the good fight. It is just that they could and should have done it the proper way by moving the court but, well, lawyers are a lot more expensive than blog posts. Even Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said that global social media platforms, including Twitter, were “welcome to work, earn money in India but they should follow the law and the Constitution”.
And this set off a strange phenomenon, with several Ministries and Government-linked personalities migrating to ‘Koo’, a new platform, as talk, ironically on Twitter itself, of a potential ban or some penal action against its management does the rounds. The world is full of technology companies that tried to replicate the success of another; after all, copycat innovation is usually a surefire bet. Well, at least it used to be. Nowadays, a phenomenon known as the “network effect” kicks in, that is a large number of users on a platform attracts even more users. For example, even after the recent privacy brouhaha surrounding WhatsApp, which made several people install messaging apps Signal and Telegram, WhatsApp’s usage did not really take a hit. Convincing an entire user base to shift bag and baggage onto another platform is nigh impossible. Even after the ban on TikTok, no single app has yet been able to replace it. And there is the example of Mastodon, another platform that experienced a popularity surge as Facebook and Twitter got occupied by Trump-supporting QAnon conspiracy theorists. Those of a particular political bent in India celebrated it and a newspaper magazine even put it on its cover. Today, Mastodon is just another attempt at an alternative. This is not to put Koo down, one indeed wishes it success. But even prominent users of the platform have been complaining of its back-end technology. Now, what happens to Twitter in India is a completely different story.
Friday, 12 February 2021 | Pioneer
