For Koo, IT minister's account lock can be yet another catalyst for user growth

The Nigerian government has signed up on India's micro-blogging alternative Koo

As Twitter and the Indian government are in yet another war of words, this time over the IT minister’s account getting locked on account of copyright violation, Indian microblogging platform Koo has waded right into it.

Will this incident drive more users to Koo and what is Koo’s approach to handling copyright violations? In this interaction with Moneycontrol, CEO of Koo, Aprameya Radhakrishna, answers these queries and more.

Definitely. Trust on a local social media platform increases when we are very clear on what we will do in a situation in India.

We are aware of local nuances and aware of local personalities. It is not random. We treat every user as equal but also be very careful about verified handles, which are the ones causing a huge uproar in public. Why do you want to create mayhem when it is simple on how to handle this issue?

We are definitely getting better. We have got a stronger team and great leadership on the engineering side. That will keep strengthening us further as we grow.

In terms of Koo activity, we have quite a few regular users now and they depend on Koo for the updates, especially in local languages. It is our long term vision of enabling the voice of every Indian. The activity would have just picked up I am guessing. I haven’t really looked at the numbers.

Generally, Koo is picking up pace and our user base is about 7 million, and we will soon breach it.

Any user, especially if it is a minister and somebody of high repute, should be intimated about any infringement. And given the opportunity to either accept or contest. That should be given to the user. Unknowingly people might have done something or what has been claimed might be false.

I think that opportunity has to be given and clear mention of who had a problem with what video. Transparency is what is required – “this person had a problem with this video that you posted for this reason and hence you are given an opportunity to take this down is a great way to handle this situation.”

The user can say he understands what this person is saying and will take it down or say no, it does not look right and will take it up with the right regulatory body for copyright. The decision should be taken offline and not by an intermediary. This final judgment cannot be passed.

When you are an intermediary, you are giving a platform to people to speak their mind. You have a set of guidelines that tells people how they should behave on the platform. This is a combination of your own guidelines and law of the land. Both of them have to be followed when a person is using the platform.

(When it comes to violations) there is black and white stuff and then there is grey stuff. As far as black and white stuff goes, which is pornography or harassment accepted universally, nobody will have a contention.

Then there are grey areas. Copyright can be super grey depending on what kind of copyright (violation) people are claiming. There are official agencies to take care of what is infringement and what is not. Now, without going to that body and without letting the user redress that problem, taking it down is taking a decision on that matter.

I think that needs to be stopped. Because there is human intervention there, sometimes you take a call and other times you don’t. The best way to get consistency is by not taking the call yourself and letting the law of the land take the call for these grey areas.

If someone has a problem they will write to redressal. We will take note of it and we will go and tell the person that this is the complaint and tell the person who is complaint also that this is not enough, and go get notice from the right authority.

It is a black and white process. We do not take judgement in grey area situation. Wherever there is a universal truth we will be comfortable doing it.