WhatsApp CEO Will Cathcart said he was worried about the Indian government\u2019s push for homegrown apps like Koo because it could force a \u2018splinternet\u2019, a characterization where instead of having a global internet, countries have their own regulations. \u201cWe already have a splinternet with Mainland China and the rest of the world,\u201d Cathcart said on the Big Technology Podcast last week adding that \u201cpeople benefit a lot from products that work globally.\u201d<\/p>\n
Koo, which is claimed to be India\u2019s answer to Twitter for non-English users, has picked a lot of steam in the country in the wake of the Narendra Modi government\u2019s ongoing war with the US-based micro-blogging platform. Many big-ticket politicians and celebrities have joined Koo in the wake of the \u2018standoff\u2019 giving it a major shot in the arm, something that saw it cross over 40 lakh users within no time. Koo aims to draw 10 crore users by the end of this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of the decisions we\u2019re going to make on the internet, our governments are going to make on the internet over the next 10-20 years, I think will really shape whether this is a global market, or whether each country has its own mini-internet with its own mini-apps. And I think the latter would be worse,\u201d Cathcart said.<\/p>\n
WhatsApp is fighting its own battles in its biggest market over a new set of terms and conditions around data and privacy, that although have been stalled until May, have become a source of grave concern for users \u2013 and the government. At the same time, the Facebook-owned company also has to contend with new laws\u2014rules for intermediaries for instance designed to curb misuse of social media\u2014in India that might force it to bring changes\u2014even break\u2014encryption.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s hard for me to imagine even how you ask people to do that, I think it\u2019s such a fundamental threat. So, we\u2019ll stand and we\u2019ll make our case, and we\u2019ll argue,\u201d Cathcart said. \u201cMy hope is, we can find something that is not breaking encryption, that addresses the concerns that\u2019s much more reasonable.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WhatsApp CEO Will Cathcart said he was worried about the Indian government\u2019s push for homegrown apps like Koo because it could force a \u2018splinternet\u2019, a characterization where instead of having a global internet, countries have their own regulations. \u201cWe already have a splinternet with Mainland China and the rest of the world,\u201d Cathcart said on the Big Technology Podcast last week adding that \u201cpeople benefit a lot from products that work globally.\u201d Koo, which is claimed to be India\u2019s answer to Twitter for non-English users, has picked a lot of steam in the country in the wake of the Narendra […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-798150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-telecom"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=798150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798150\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=798150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=798150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=798150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}