No, you did not read wrong. Brazil has a social network that competes with Twitter. Of course, it is not a social network created by the Brazilian government, but created by a Brazilian (and it has great potential)

Drakkle. This is the name of the application that intends to take the place of Twitter.

What is Drakkle

Drakkle is a Brazilian social network that was recently launched, but unlike other competitors such as Koo App, it does not claim to cater to a specific class of people, such as Indians for example. Instead, in its description in the Play Store you can see that it covers the general public, saying that you can find and follow profiles about memes, music, sports, news and more.
It also promises to protect the privacy of its users, with a simple and quite convincing sentence:

Your data is yours. We do not sell them to any third party

Looking at the screenshots provided in the Google app store you can see that it has a more informal approach, this being the last one:

First Impressions

A quick look and we can tell that it looks simple and beautiful. The whole look is built with a dark mode, without the option to use a light theme. This may be a little strange for people who prefer to use their smartphone in the light theme, but personally I love it. The icons and the font resemble an iOS app, even featuring an animation like Apple’s “swipe left to go back one screen”.

With a dark theme and an iOS style look I find it hard not to like the look. In many ways it is even better than the official Twitter app (not that this is a big deal).

Features are the key point of any application. Drakkle does not have any feature like a “retweet”, this being something to add. The rest has the same features: post something (each post is called “Drak”), like someone’s Draks, comment, follow other people… You can use the app in English and Portuguese.

Privacy

Nowadays, privacy is essential. It does not ask for any special permission, emphasizing the promise to protect users’ privacy. Because it is based in Brazil, your data is protected by the LGPD.

Official apps

Currently it has only an Android version, which you can download through the Play Store by clicking here. There is no version for iOS, although as I already commented its look seems to have been inspired by it. In the FAQ we can find a question about a launch for an iOS application, with the following answer:

No spoilers 😬 (Translated phrase)

Apparently, soon we will also have a version for the apple system, in addition to a web version that says “Under construction”.

Conclusion

It is an application with great potential to fight with Twitter. It’s already ahead of the Koo App because it covers different countries and different types of interests, while it focuses only on India. It also does better than Mastodon because of its look, in addition to maintaining the privacy of its users.