#BanTwitterInIndia Trends on Twitter as Users Switch to Koo, Twitter's Alternative from India

#BanTwitterInIndia has been trending on Twitter as users are tweeting about banning the microblogging and social networking service. This comes after the war between Twitter and the Indian government intensified yesterday. Last week, the Indian government had sent a notice to Twitter to ban more than 500 accounts, Jack Dorsey, Twitter head, clarified via in an official blog post that no accounts belonging to any news media, entities, journalists, politicians and activists have been taken down. Koo vs Twitter: Things to Know More About Twitter’s New Alternative from India.

The blog post read, "To do so, we believe, would violate their fundamental right to free expression under Indian law. We informed MeitY (Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology) of our enforcement actions today. Over the last 10 days, Twitter has been served with several separate blocking orders by MeitY under section 69A of the Information Technology Act. Twitter said that out of these, two were emergency blocking orders that "we temporarily complied with but subsequently restored access to the content in a manner that we believe was consistent with Indian law."

The centre calls Twitter's blog post 'unusual' to release a blog post over the removal of several accounts related to farmers' protests. On the other hand, Koo, Twitter's Indian alternative from India gained popularity as several ministers including Ravi Shankar Prasad, Piyush Goyal and Shivraj Singh Chauhan created their account on the platform. The centre has shown interest in Koo after Twitter failed to respond to a government's notice that mentioned blocking around 257 tweets and accounts tweeting about 'Farmer Genocide'.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Feb 11, 2021 10:49 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).