There are three things that are like Aladdin's genie — difficult to put back in a bottle — democracy, freedom and the Internet. In this, the Internet combines the first two and has a global character. But business and human behaviour are such that when alternatives perk up in the public space, we need to look at the details to see who is likely to succeed and who is not.
It is in such a context that we need to see the tussle between the BJP-led Indian government and global microblogging platform Twitter.
As it happens, sitting ministers and Bollywood's favourite right-wing icon, Kangana Ranaut, have decided a two-pronged strategy: one of using State power (read: police) to stop Twitter from airing uncomfortable views, and the other of propping up the desi alternative to Twitter, Koo, which is exulting after a round of funding and a download count of its app that looks interesting, if not promising.
So, what happens next? Here's my take: Koo may threaten Indian and global liberals challenging the right-wing thought process, but may not be able to put the freedom genie called Twitter back into its bottle.
What Makes Some Social Apps / Platforms More Popular?
Having seen the rise of giants (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp) and the fall of others (Yahoo chat rooms, Google Plus, Orkut), let's say I know a thing or two about social media. One is that people don't switch to an alternative app unless there is a compelling value proposition — and the winners are those who combine market power with user-generated content with a unique characteristic of platforms as places where different types of people converge.
Twitter is in a paradoxical state of enchantment. Its penetration is far below that of Instagram, WhatsApp or Facebook, but it is THE place to be for politicians, policymakers and journalists worldwide who believe in democracy and public discourse.
That is precisely how Narendra Modi muscled his way into prime minister-hood, riding a method that Barack Obama used to storm the White House in Washington.
But we have a problem after that. Ideologically, Modi's culture is closer to Donald Trump’s than Obama’s. His followers want India to be the next China, not the next America in the Democratic mould of President Joe Biden. In this, the Myanmarese generals who just dethroned Aung San Suu Kyi, the Chinese communo-nationalists, and Turkey's Erdogan have a lot in common with the current administration in India.
With an emphasis on national pride, internal security, and self-reliant economic prowess as their own ‘toolkit’, this lot would prefer using State power to put extra potent genies of freedom, democracy, and the Internet back into the nationalist bottle. As much as they possibly can.
Where Does Koo’s Potential Killer-App Character Come From?
Twitter, based in the US and weaned in the country's liberal heartlands, knows the difference between the police and courts, law enforcers and judges and the Constitution and government orders of the day. Hence, it is politely declining many of the take-down orders to block some users on Twitter. For the BJP, freedom of speech is not unfettered or global in character. It likes to set guidelines, regulation or control to the extent possible under the Constitution. It is empowered by colonial-era laws governing public order, like sedition, that it can comfortably invoke to mute dissidents and rebels.
Can its constitutional nationalist ‘Koo’ succeed, as it were? Methinks it is possible.
Koo’s potential killer-app character comes from three things: its bet on Indian languages, its support from the government establishment, and last but not least, the average Indian’s increasingly evident bias towards national pride rather than analytical debate.
In that sense, Koo might succeed as a ‘TikTok’ for words — where the hoi polloi say ‘buzz-off’ to the over-educated, self-important liberals. True, Twitter also allows Indian languages, but what if Koo dumbs down the discourse?
Why Koo Can Potentially Cut Off the Masses from the Classes
The catch for Koo is that the average Jai or Janaki are usually not driven by words, but by engaging visuals, slogans, and hushed whispers. That job is already being done by what is tongue-in-cheek called ‘WhatsApp University’. The Facebook-owned WhatsApp and Instagram are to the social media era what media baron Rupert Murdoch's tabloids were to the print age.
In the early days of Twitter, they used to say “Facebook is those you went to school with and Twitter is the those you wished you had gone to school with”.
Alas, that innocence is gone. But what remains in the Right vs Liberal sling-and-slush war on Twitter is the platform's discreet charm as a vehicle where thought leadership is refined and defined in a democratic sense.
Koo cannot take away that charm easily. But it can potentially cut off the masses from the classes — unless liberals decide to chase the right into their new alley, the way the right gatecrashed a California party called ‘Twitter’, circa 2010.
This means that in method, message, and medium, liberals have a wake-up call. India is not quite a Myanmar or China or Turkey, but there is sufficient ballast here for those who like to follow in their footsteps to give the liberals a run for their life.
That said, the discreet charm of Twitter will haunt those who bad-mouth its CEO and his ways. It is one thing to win elections, but quite another to be left out of a global standard for democracy.
Who Are Koo’s Competitors?
In other news, the well-funded Hike messenger, founded by Bharti group scion Kavin Mittal, shut operations in January 2021, after struggling for years to be an Asian competitor to WhatsApp. Privacy-loving elites may ditch WhatsApp for Signal after the Facebook app unabashedly asserted its right to be a data-seeking Peeping Tom, but for much of the mass market, the comfort of a common standard to exchange memes, jokes and rumours remains unchallengeable. Hike thus lost the war to WhatsApp.
Meanwhile, Instagram has grown beyond the pictures and videos. Long posts have grown on the app perhaps to show that for non-political issues (food/tourism/showbiz/sex), Instagram may well be the gold standard.
Koo’s real competition may thus come from Instagram or TikTok wannabes. Hike's failure shows Koo’s limitations going forward. While liberals may find Koo throwing a challenge to Twitter, those enjoying themselves on Instagram and short-video apps may not be quite inclined to jump to Koo.
As Lewis Carroll wrote for Alice in Wonderland: “What is the use of a book without pictures or conversations?”
We may thus well be heading for a Digital Dystopia where pictures thrive on one app while conversations become noise in another or end up as echo chambers. Oh, are we already there?
(The writer is a senior journalist who has covered economics and politics for Reuters, The Economic Times, Business Standard and Hindustan Times. He tweets as @madversity. This is an opinion piece. The views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)
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