Your friend just joined up for Clubhouse. Let them in;
This should have been the most received notification on your mobile in the recent times.
To all the 90’s kids who have been only to the Vice city’s Malibu club. A lucrative title like Clubhouse per se is enough to lure us into downloading this app. For all of those who the noisy UI of existing apps has nauseated, the Clubhouse is like a newly launched Apple product so simple, limpid yet just like Apple, bringing old school features in a new semblance. Internet chat rooms are not novel. Its existence predates the Orkut days.
The very nature of the app raises several questions on privacy and security. Social audio rooms are the new elephant in the room for the govt which is already in a tug of war with existing platforms for regulating their content. Traditional methods of content moderation aren’t going to work here; audio based interactions are faster real-time, echoing real life far closely than textbased interactions. The audio rooms are a haven for; online bullies, breeding communalism, mental harassment, all other diabolic behaviours that are solely dysfunctional. Since it allows users to peep into any room that their friends are a part of, enabling anyone to ‘stalk’ a person as they leap from room to room, the app even sends notifications to their followers. Therefore, the experience involves constant hyper awareness about how every action is being broadcast to followers.
There have also been multiple concerns about how Clubhouse temporarily records the audio in a room “for purposes of investigating the incident” and deletes it later. However still, it is susceptible to be compromised in the absence of End to End encryption mechanism. Also, this has been done with our permission. Besides, there have been reports(1)* that the back end infra of the app is supported. by a Chinese firm.The report also mentions a possibility of the Chinese government accessing raw audio, as well as other security flaws. ( No! Please don’t give me that sceptical look. I ain’t a Sanghi.).
The app permissions aspect has always been an area of contention. Unfortunately, few platforms abuse this feature for their wealth, making user privacy a fool’s game. Likewise, The Clubhouse seeks permission to access user’s contacts, which is a significant privacy concern, as it gives the app information about people who might never even join it in the first place.
From the policymaker’s perspective, these being the issues, the rise of Clubhouse could not be seen as an isolated event. “Social-audio” is a new pie in the market; every tech giant hustles to get a stake in this pie by augmenting these features to their existing platforms like Twitter’s (Twitter Spaces). It is also pertinent to cite that India still lacks a stringent data protection law. Thus it makes users more vulnerable to data breaches and privacy violations, this being an impediment. Therefore, the policymakers should take a sensible path rather than cutting the throat of these platforms. Tech platforms are like the mythical character Raavan; once guillotined, there going to be another ten firms keen to usurp the former’s position. (how the demise of Tik Tok lead to reels, shorts, et al.) Hence, spur of the moment action will never bear fruit.
Way Forward, making a new regulatory framework for these upcoming apps will be a pain in the gluteus maximus for policymakers that need to be dealt with prudence and levelheadedness. However, every stakeholder should discern that the platform won’t progress and benefit the users until innovation is balanced with respect for privacy, security and data rights.
All these aside. In these arduous times,for a regular user when “You’re all caught up” on Instagram, Clubhouse does act as opium to our boredom impulses. But, from another dimension, It is the epitome of free speech medium that allows us to vent out, under the current circumstances where our voices are severely suppressed in all spheres. To sum up, it’s a great app with a farsighted premise, which indeed has some wrinkles that need to be ironed out. Happy clubhousing.
And finally! feel free to follow me on clubhouse @harigvnth.
Check my Medium profile for more such quality content. Harigovinth Ezhumalai
Footnote;
(1)According to a report by the Stanford Internet Observatory, the back-
end infrastructure of Clubhouse issupplied by a Chinese startup called
Agora.
