While Twitter has suspended Kangana Ranaut's account permanently for violating its rules around hate speech, it’s rival app Koo has welcomed the actress with open arms and said she was right in believing that the 'Made in India' platform is like "home" while everything else was rented. Kangana, in her first Koo (as the messages on the platform are called) in February, had said this was a "new place" and would take time to get familiar with. "...magar bhade ka ghar bhade ka hota hai, apna ghar kaisa bhi ho apna hota hai (a rented house is rented, one's own house is one's own no matter what)."
Kangana in February had threatened to leave Twitter for Koo. “Your time is up @Twitter time to shift to #kooapp will inform everyone soon about my account details there. Absolutely thrilled to experience home grown #kooapp,” she had written on Twitter. This was her response to Twitter suspending her account for a few hours after her controversial tweets on the farmers’ protest.
Co-founder of Koo, Mayank Bidwatka said in a statement that Kangana is free to share her opinions on the site. “Kangana Jee, this is your home, you can voice your opinions to everyone here with pride,” he wrote on Koo.
The Queen actress has over 4.48 lakh followers on Koo, a microblogging site that was co-founded by entrepreneurs Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidwatka, The platform, which won the government’s Atmanirbhar App Innovation Challenge took wings in February as several BJP leaders, ministers and government departments announced that they were joining it.
On Tuesday, Twitter announced in a statement that it has permanently suspended actor Kangana’s account for repeated violations of rules, specifically its “Hateful Conduct and Abusive Behaviour policy".
Responding to Twitter suspending her account, Kangana said, “Twitter has only proved my point they are Americans and by birth a white person feels entitled to enslave a brown person, they want to tell you what to think, speak or do, fortunately I have many platforms I can use to raise my voice including my own art in the form of cinema but my heart goes out to the people of this nation who have been tortured, enslaved and censored for thousands of years and still their is no end to the suffering.”
Kangana, known for her often inflammatory tweets, posted several messages following the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress’ win over the BJP in West Bengal and incidents of post-poll violence. Calling for President’s Rule in the state, she also blamed Mamata for the violence and called her various names.
