Twitter Bans Koo

Twitter banned one of the Koo handles by the name Koo Eminence on the grounds of violating Twitter Rules.

Aprameya Radhakrishna, Co-Founder and CEO at Koo, expressed disapproval, saying that Koo got banned just for competing with Twitter. Alongside Koo, Mastodon, the decentralised social networking platform, has also been suspended. Twitter is also marking all links to Mastodon “unsafe.”

Lately, many accounts of journalists and organisations have been de-platformed. This has led to people questioning whether free speech exists on the platform. For example, last week, the CEO of Twitter, Elon Musk, faced criticism for banning the ElonJet account, which tracked his real-time location. However, many have described this to be an overreaction from Musk since such information is publicly available on any flight tracker.

Likewise, Musk has also suspended the accounts of journalists from CNN, the New York Times, and the Washington Post for creating his real-time location, which he refers to as “assassination coordinates”, in direct violation of Twitter’s terms of service.

Aaron Rupar, an independent journalist whose Twitter account was banned, said that he was banned for publishing a newsletter covering an article by Noah Berlatsky about Musk’s reactionary populism and for taking a dig at Musk, saying that Musk seems to violate Twitter’s policy for posting footage of someone without their consent.

The spree of banned accounts comes after Musk heralded himself as the harbinger of free speech. Previously, Musk had also reinstated nearly 62000 banned accounts having more than 10000 followers; notable names include Donald Trump, Kanye West, and Jordan Peterson. While there were several criticisms of the move, some found it an important step towards ensuring free speech on the platforms. But, one only wonders what they will have to say now that Musk is selectively censoring content on the platform.