Twitter Is Responsible For Creating Bots, Has Promoted Them In The Past, Koo CEO Says

Koo – an Indian-made competitor to Twitter – will not charge users for a verification badge, its founder and CEO Aprameya Radhakrishna said when he confronted the big rival for allegedly creating bots and now charging users for verification.

Koo, which allows users to express their opinions in Indian languages, has already crossed 50 million downloads and is now flying in the nest of competitors, starting a campaign on Twitter by making itself prominently visible on guaranteed securities and offering them better deals on its site for free. costs.

Since taking over Twitter, billionaire Elon Musk has initiated major changes, laid off employees and talked about charging $8 (roughly Rs. 650) for ‘verified’ handles.

Koo, on the other hand, provides Aadhaar-based self-verification and a free yellow verification tag for elites.

Radhakrishna said Twitter bots, also known as zombies, are automated accounts controlled by bot software. Their goal is to tweet and retarget specific content on a large scale while matching everyday Twitter users.

“Bots on Twitter are known to be responsible for spreading fake news campaigns, spamming, violating others’ privacy, and sock advertising,” he told PTI. “This is a problem that Twitter created.” At one point, Twitter promoted bots as a novel idea but now has struggled to control them, he said.

“Its only response (in 2021) has been to provide a system to call other bots ‘good’ based on the bot’s announcement! This is an artificial solution and completely avoids the problem,” he added. “If Twitter is meant to be a place for human interaction, only real people should be allowed to speak in the forum.” He went on to say that the only way forward is to ensure that accounts that do not verify their identity must be removed from the platform.

“Just like the offline world, everyone has the right to be seen as a human being in the online world as well,” he said.

In the Indian social media space, impersonation is a legal right under Rule 4(7) of the Arbitration Guidelines, 2021.

“Twitter’s proposal to charge money to get the right, which is allowed by law, does nothing to add salt to the wound created by Twitter itself,” he said. “Twitter created a bot problem, paid only lip service to solve it and now aims to extort money from citizens to get an ID paid for by the Indian taxpayer!” He said the internet should belong to people, not to a company or its owner.

“Koo believes in creating reliable and healthy conversations between people. Earlier this year, we started offering free voluntary self-verification and more than 125,000 Indians have used this privilege.

“All a user has to do is verify his identity using his Aadhaar number and within seconds he can verify that he is the real owner of the card by entering the OTP sent to his Aadhaar-linked mobile phone. All this is done in a very secure manner using a UIDAI approved third-party vendor, ” he said.

Koo, he said, will continue to protect this important digital right and “identity verification will remain free.”

Serial entrepreneur Radhakrishna, known for building ride-sharing company TaxiForSure (which was acquired by Ola in 2015), started Koo – a language-focused microblogging platform – in early 2020. It was intended to be a local, hyperlocal alternative to Twitter.

Stating that prominence is recognizing the influence, status, achievements, skills, or professional position of a person, Koo said that he awards the Yellow tick against user profiles based on clear, pre-defined criteria that reflect regional principles and achievements.

“Koo prides itself on its transparent and inclusive process that is far removed from Twitter’s legacy process of ‘True, Remarkable and Effective’ or even the new $8 affordability! Koo is actually the first social media platform to celebrate. Eminence in a clear and transparent way.” The Koo Eminence ticket, he said, cannot be bought and is given forever.

“The ability to buy a blue tick and be considered a special certified person is an insult to the real heroes who contribute to society. The bought tick makes a mockery of these real heroes who must continue to pay a foreign company every month to be respected for their work,” he added.