In a bizarre twist of events, the Tooter CEO has finally spoken up, but not very coherently. After allegations surfaced that Tooter, an ‘Indian version’ of Twitter, had opened unauthorised verified accounts of several leaders, including Prime Minister Modi, PMO and Amit Shah, the CEO has now taken to Twitter to blame BJP IT Cell head of sabotaging Tooter.
On January 11th, Amit Malviya, the IT cell head of BJP had taken to Twitter to clarify that Prime Minister Modi, who mysteriously has a verified account on Tooter, was not on Tooter and that the account was unauthorised. He has also clarified that Amit Shah, BJP, its state units, JP Nadda etc, who also had ‘verified accounts’ on Tooter were actually not on Tooter.
Responding to this tweet, Tooter CEO, Mr Nanda, took to Twitter and said that he painstakingly took 24 hours to “research” the issue and was finally ready to provide answers in 3 tweets.
Namaste Amit Malviya ji. My apologizes for not
— Nanda (@nanda8tooter) January 12, 2021
replying to your tweet sooner. I needed time
to carefully research and draft my reply
Here is my reply in 3 tweets (1/3) https://t.co/N87AiIzbbF
While everyone waited with bated breath, presuming that the CEO would apologise or at the very least, explain the bizarre decision to randomly open unauthorised accounts of various leaders, Nanda called the clarification by Amit Malviya as “careless, misleading and inaccurate”. He then asked Malviya to “delete this tweet”, oddly enough.
Sir, I say this with utmost respect. Your tweet is
— Nanda (@nanda8tooter) January 12, 2021
careless, misleading and inaccurate. It is common courtesy
to discuss with us before tweeting about us, which was
not followed here. So, please delete this tweet
immediately (2/3) https://t.co/N87AiIzbbF
In his third and last tweet, Nanda said that Amit Malviya was actually hurting the cause of PM Modi by clarifying that PM Modi was not on Tooter and that his “verified account” on Tooter was actually unauthorised.
Decolonizing Bharat is a core mission of BJP and digital decolonization is our goal. We aim to make Bharat #atmanirbhar in the social media domain and@narendramodi ji is our inspiration. So, if you can, join us,
— Nanda (@nanda8tooter) January 12, 2021
if you can't, fine. But please don't sabotage us.
Thank you🙏.(3/3) https://t.co/N87AiIzbbF
In the three tweets, Nanda offered no explanation as to why Tooter would open unauthorised accounts of government functionaries, party functionaries and even the PMO and PM Modi. This is clearly an odd move since unauthorised accounts of these kids are clearly deemed impersonation and can be extremely dangerous if someone decides to willy-nilly tweet whatever they please on their own, in the name of these powerful people.
We had earlier reported that Tooter seems to randomly making ‘verified accounts’ of whoever they think should be on Tooter and then, they are coding to ensure that their Tweets are then pulled into Tooter and reflect automatically in their Tooter account. However, according to the CEO, raising issues about this strange arrangement seems to “sabotage”.
The strangeness that is Tooter, the Indian version of Twitter
OpIndia had reported earlier about just how bizarre the functioning of Tooter really is.
Tooter, in its ‘About Us’ page says, “We believe that India should have a Swadeshi social network. Without one we are just a digital colony of the American Twitter India Company, no different than what we were under the British East India Company. Tooter is our Swadeshi Andolan 2.0. Join us in this Andolan. Join us!”.
Interestingly, the moment someone joins Tooter, they are automatically made to follow three accounts – that of the CEO of Tooter, Mr R Vaidya and one ‘news’ handle.
A detailed report by Inc24 highlights how privacy policy page mentioned that it wouldn’t provide a user’s data to any person “unless compelled by a court order issued by a US court, except in cases of a life-threatening emergency.” Another passage under the header “Children Under the Age of 18” read, “California residents under 16 years of age may have additional rights regarding the collection and sale of their personal information. Please see Your California Privacy Rights (below) for more information.”
In fact, the ‘Terms of Service’ mentioned that in matters relating to the website, any disputes or claims shall be governed in accordance with the internal laws of the State of Pennsylvania, a state in the US.
It would appear that when Tooter launched, they had mostly copied their terms and conditions from another website. However, after this was covered by Inc24, Tooter had updated their policy.
Tooter also says that its codebase and ‘free and open source’.
The Directors of Tooter Private Limited are Naresh Vankayalapati and Rameshwar Rao Vankayalapati. Not much is specifically known about them, or the CEO Mr Nanda.
