Twitter has suspended the account of the Indian microblogging platform Koo.
The Twitter handle @kooeminence was suspended on Friday, following the suspension of several prominent global journalists’ accounts, including those from the New York Times, CNN, and the Washington Post, by billionaire Elon Musk-owned Twitter.
Mayank Bidawatka, co-founder of the homegrown microblogging platform, said on Twitter, “I forgot. There’s more! – Banning Mastodon accounts. – Not allowing mastodon links saying it’s unsafe. – Banning Koo’s eminence handle. I mean seriously. How much more control does the guy need?”
Mastodon is Twitter’s social media competitor.
In a series of tweets, Bidawatka questioned the reasoning behind suspending the @kooeminence account, which was only set up a few days ago to answer questions from celebrities and VIPs looking to use the Indian social media platform.
“1. Posting publicly available info isn’t doxxing. Why shoot the messenger
2. Journalists that posted links did nothing wrong. Posting a link to publicly available info isn’t doxxing the way posting a link to an online article isn’t plagiarism,” according to Koo co-founder Bidawtka.
“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?” he added.
According to Koo, Twitter killed spaces overnight in order to control conversations.
“He further added that there are other things that Twitter had done in the past week which is not a democracy. One needs to speak up,” he said. Bidawatka promoted Koo, claiming that the homegrown microblogging platform is the best alternative to Twitter.
“This place is what it is because of you and millions of other users like us. Let’s not fuel this guy’s ego,” he continued.
“And guess what! Suddenly. Almost suddenly #ElonIsDestroyingTwitter has been removed from the trending section. Twitter is a publisher. Not a platform anymore!” Bidawatka added.
This comes just a day after Twitter suspended the accounts of about a half-dozen prominent journalists who have been covering the social media site and Musk, citing violations of “doxxing” rules.
According to the New York Times, the suspended accounts include Ryan Mac of The New York Times, Donie O’Sullivan of CNN, Drew Harwell of The Washington Post, Matt Binder of Mashable, Micah Lee of The Intercept, political journalist Keith Olbermann, Aaron Rupar and Tony Webster, both independent journalists.
On Thursday (local time), the social media platform displayed “account suspended” notices on the accounts of these journalists.
On Thursday (local time), Twitter updated its policy to prohibit the sharing of “live location information, including information shared on Twitter directly or links to 3rd-party URL(s) of travel routes.”
Meanwhile, the United Nations and the European Union have threatened to sanction Musk for Twitter’s actions.