How did the idea of Koo come about?
I had started Vokal, where people could search and get answers in voice in Indian languages. Some people in the community asked why only answer, why could not we say what was on our mind? The first thing that came to my mind was that there were already products for that; why could not they use those? Then we realised that all the existing microblogging sites were predominantly in English. So, we thought let’s start a platform for local languages. We launched in March 2020, just before Covid hit.
With the government vs Twitter spat, a whole lot of personalities and government departments are coming on board. How much of it was organic? Did you have a strategy?
This came all of a sudden to us. We had started out with Indian languages, with voice and video options to say something on your mind; we made it easier to sign in, [and offered] hashtags in your own language. Then we saw Twitter getting into trouble in the US. That’s when we introduced English on Koo. We didn’t expect the Twitter incident in India to happen so early. We went live in English and then some of the major personalities, ministers to government departments, started joining Koo.
There seems to be a slant towards a particular ideology. The prominent personalities you have all seem to be from the ruling party.
It is important to have Indian technology as well for some of the fundamental uses of the internet, (like) microblogging. That’s the reason why some of the prominent personalities and government departments came to Koo.
It’s a matter of time before the other side of the political arena also comes. We have extended our invitation to everybody. Congress leaders Kamal Nath and D.K. Shivakumar joined recently. Former prime minister H.D. Devegowda and former Karnataka chief minister H.D. Kumaraswamy are there. The recent surge is because of a particular reason; there will be other reasons for everybody else to join. It’s not by design, it’s about when each person feels like joining the platform.
Your co-founder recently stated that what was illegal in the offline world would be illegal in the online world, too. But Koo is not enforcing any restrictions or guidelines.
Koo does not exist if there is no freedom of speech or expression. We are building it so the voices of India who don’t know English can also be on the internet. That is the fundamental premise. There are a few people who might be up to some mischief. Even there, most things are black and white—child porn, harassing women, harassing anybody for that matter. Certain things like opinions that may be inflammatory may come in the grey area. That might be 0 to 1 per cent, though.
In order to ensure Koo is safe, there will be certain guidelines, which will be in line with the laws of the land. The Internet is actually you being in a room that is infinite. You should be very conscious of what you say, the consequences of what you say. The responsibility of what you say and whether it will offend someone and lead to offline violence is something users should put to self-regulation, given the power the internet has.
Do you think the government’s new rules for social media help? Or will it be problematic for operators like you?
It definitely helps. It puts everybody on the same playing field. An international social media cannot handle something differently from what an Indian social media company would.