How is this free speech? Koo co-founders question Twitter on suspension of platform's query handle

New Delhi, Dec 17: Elon Musk-owned Twitter has suspended an account of Indian microblogging platform Koo, which had been set up for users' queries. It was for queries posed by celebrities and VIPs wanting to join the social media platform.

Taking to micro-blogging platform, Aprameya Radhakrishna, who is also the CEO of Koo, wrote,''One of the Koo handles on Twitter just got banned. For what? Because we compete with Twitter? So? Mastodon also got blocked today. How is this free speech and what world are we living in?.''

Meanwhile, in a series of tweets, Mayank Bidawatka, the other co-founder, lashed out at Musk for 'shooting the messenger.'

"I forgot. There's more! - Banning Mastodon account. - 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 the social media rival of Twitter.

The development comes after Twitter suspended the accounts of several prominent journalists, including ones from The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, Mashable, The Intercept and independent journalists who were covering the micro-blogging platform's developments in the past few months.

Twitter also started suspending accounts that was live-tracking private jets, including one that tracks a jet owned by Musk called @ElonJet.

Earlier on Thursday, Musk wrote that the banned journalists had posted 'exact real-time location, basically assassination coordinates, in (obvious) direct violation of Twitter terms of services.'

For the unversed, Doxxing (also spelled doxing) is the act of revealing someone's personal information online. Doxxing is a form of online harassment that means publicly exposing someone's real name, address, job, or other identifying data.

Meanwhile, the United Nations and the European Union has threatened to sanction Musk on the actions taken by Twitter.