Clubhouse

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Clubhouse

"Clubhouse app icon on a smartphone" Clubhouse Type Social Networking App Launch Date April 2020 Status Active Product Line product Platform iOS Website https://www.joinclubhouse.com/

C

lubhouse is an audio-chat social-networking application founded by Paul Davison and Rohan Seth in March 2020. The platform is currently in its beta stage and uses an invitation based system where existing users have two invites to onboard to new members to download the application. The mobile app allows users to listen and participate in a conversation room usually centering around a specific topic or purpose. Unlike most popular social media platforms, once a room is closed, live chats in the room disappear and are not recorded. Clubhouse, a year after its inception, has grown to over 10 million users and reached a valuation of $1 billion. In its short lifespan, Clubhouse has garnered the attention of many celebrities, making headlines that added to its buzz among social media users. After seeing the success of Clubhouse, other social media companies have joined in on competing in the flourishing audio chat space on the internet. In spite of all the success, many critics of Clubhouse have posed concerns around its operations, specifically regarding handling of user data and the platform's lack of moderation and security. Founding creators Paul and Rohan have recently announced their goal of opening up Clubhouse to a worldwide release sometime later in 2021.

History

Creation

Paul Davison Clubhouse Co-Founder

Clubhouse's invitation system

Founders Paul Davison and Rohan Seth previously worked on multiple entrepreneurial ventures together. Their most notable one was Talkshow, an application that allowed users to hold public text conversations. Their goal with Clubhouse was to make a social app driven by “conversations rather than posts.” The iOS app is invitation only, allowing each new member 2 invites to send to their friends.

Notable Events

The joining of notable celebrities spiked Clubhouse’s usage since their early development in March 2020. Notable celebrities such as Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Drake have all joined the platform. Musk notably held a Clubhouse conversation with Robinhood CEO Vladimir Tenev about the unprecedented rise of GameStopstock. This incident surpassed the app's conversation room limits and was recorded and livestreamed on YouTube. Later Holocaust survivor Sami Steigmann crashed Clubhouse's servers hosting an interracial conversation for 16 hours.

Growing Competition

The competition for Clubhouse has grown as social media platforms have been actively testing similar audio-based products and functionality. On March 10th, Twitter released a new app update to experiment with their new audio based platform: Spaces, which features similar functionalities to Clubhouse. Shortly after on March 31st, Discord updated their platform to include Stage Channels that offers an audio stage platform. On April 7, Facebook released a new Q&A platform Hotline. It differs from Clubhouse in that it allows video and more formal presentations to be scheduled. Q&A functionality is built in at its core and allows the host to field questions from the audience which are supplied via chat. Hotline is currently only accessibly online with iOS and Android apps reportedly in development. Meanwhile Slack and LinkedIn have additionally been heavily rumored to be building a similar product.

Valuation

According to Bloomberg, Twitter recently held talks with Clubhouse about acquiring them for $4 billion. These talks are no longer active, though it is unclear why they fell through. Instead, Clubhouse is reportedly seeking to raise new funding at a valuation of $4 billion, a 4x increase from their most recent evaluation of $1 billion in January, 2021.

Features

Clubhouse's Hallway View

Profile

Similar to other social media platforms, Clubhouse allows each user to create a profile. Each profile may contain a profile photo, follower and followers count, a small bio, and an @ handle. The application features a plain-text editor not restricting users from adding emoji’s to their profile, direct messaging, and their comments. The application additionally allows users to connect their Twitter and Instagram accounts to help users find people to connect with.

Clubhouse Hallway

The Hallway is Clubhouse’s name for their main feed. Here, users can find active and ongoing chatrooms to drop into along with the ability to schedule their own room. At the top right corner, users have the ability to search for a member, invite new members to clubhouse, view a calendar with upcoming rooms, view their notifications, or edit their Clubhouse profile.

Clubhouse Rooms

Clubhouse's Room View

In Clubhouse, rooms are available to access from The Hallway and users can jump in and out of rooms as long as the room size is under a set limit. The three main roles of users on Clubhouse are Listeners, Speakers, and Moderators. When you first join a Clubhouse room you join as a listener who can listen in on speakers in a room. Listeners can be upgraded to either Speakers or Moderators. Speakers have the ability to mute and unmute their microphone and speak for everyone there, while Moderators are given the ability to moderate the room through promoting and demoting user roles.

Unique Uses

Businesses on Clubhouse

Clubhouse actively pushes for big brands and creative collectives to adopt their platform. In December 2020, Clubhouse announced its Creator Pilot Program, offering in-house services to help brands produce events and widen their reach. Audio Collective, an audio creator community, is an example of a company that took advantage of this program, offering partnerships with creators and brands to build audio events on the iOS app.

During Clubhouse’s weekly Town Hall on March 14, 2021, CEO Paul Davidson announced the new Clubhouse Creator First accelerator program. The stated goal of the program is to “support and equip emerging creators with the resources they need to bring their ideas and creativity to life.” The program provides creative development assistance, promotion on and off the app, a monthly stipend, and other avenues of support. The first year of the program with accept 20 creators.

China

Clubhouse, in the early stages of its development, was commonly used by users in China to freely express their opinions against Chinese government censorship. Many users recount that the non-permanent nature of Clubhouse influenced people to share more personal stories and have conversations with less of a filter. For Chinese users, Clubhouse included many political discussions that were otherwise not allowed on Chinese Internet. The Chinese government eventually blocked Clubhouse on February 8th.

Ethical Concerns

Privacy

Clubhouse has faced multiple accusations of mishandling user data. In one instance, the Stanford Internet Observatory confirmed that Agora Inc., the company that provides the backend infrastructure for the mobile app, was based out of Shanghai, China.This raised many concerns as internet traffic indicated that users were still ultimately using the application. Furthermore, many have pointed at Clubhouse's lack of industry-standard security practices which are needed to adequately protect user data. Bloomberg in a recent article highlighted the existence of third-party websites that were web scraping and organizing Clubhouse chatroom audio for later streaming at a different site. Clubhouse’s lack of anti-scraping technology meant that virtually anyone could easily record the activity from a public channel.

In a different instance, Clubhouse was criticized for making shadow profiles for users that were not even on the application. People have anecdotally claimed that Clubhouse creates these from the contact lists of users currently on the application. To address this, Clubhouse released on update on March 12, 2021 that longer requires access to user’s contact lists in order for them to invite others to use the app. Instead, users will be able to send out invites by directly inputting phone numbers. Lastly, many have cited concerns with Clubhouse recording the audio from their chat rooms. The platform's Privacy Policy claims that such practices are necessary for investigating instances regarding community guidelines.

Lack of Moderation

Clubhouse’s lax moderation on its platform has encouraged its users to discuss topics that are normally censored on other platforms. Numerous public figures associated with QAnon and other similar extremist groups were early adopters of Clubhouse, using the app to communicate with their supporters. The app, which is similar to other social media platforms, has continuously struggled with misinformation campaigns. To mitigate this issue, on March 5th, 2021, Clubhouse updated their community guidelines and released new tools to report specific instances that violated such guidelines.

Harassment, hate speech, trolling, and other infractions to Clubhouse’s terms of service is allowed to rampantly flourish since there is no sufficient mechanism in place for users to report such violations when they observe them. Moreover, there is no functionality that allows users to block other users, further reducing the ability for users to combat harassment on the app. On top of that, conversations carried out within chat rooms are not recorded, so there is no documentation of instances of harassment occurring other than what individual users can attest to hearing or can record themselves. The lack of any serious moderation functionality to combat this type of malignant behavior has lead to some criticisms regarding the app’s disregard for establishing and enforcing community guidelines that are necessary for maintaining healthy online communities.

Moderation specialists from other companies have expressed that there many complex challenges with implementing processes to enforce effective moderation on web platforms that make it difficult for Clubhouse developers to address the above issues. Such challenges revolve not only around the difficulty of processing auditory information, but also around identifying and combatting social patterns. For instance, some moderation specialists explain that having to record and review audio of negative interactions, determine what negative behavioral patterns look like, and address other deep-seated social phenomena in culture are tasks that are simply too much for Clubhouse to handle.

Other instances of behavior that get past Clubhouse’s scant moderation efforts include pseudoscience, nationalism, racism, and anti-Semitism.

Spread of Misinformation

Clubhouse is particularly vulnerable to misinformation and disinformation campaigns due to the relative difficulty of confirming claims during conversation. The flow of listening and talking is unfiltered by nature and interrupting speakers isn't possible in certain rooms. Thus, speakers and moderators can significantly impact the topic and direction of conversations. Much of the app's initial appeal to users revolved around creating a safe space outside of the rampant Cancel Culture ongoing in other mainstream social media platforms like Twitter. However, users being incentivized to speak freely is not conducive to creating safe environments since users of malicious intent can act with little to no repercussions. Racism, conspiracy theories, and gaslighting are some of countless methods of spreading disinformation which have inevitably surfaced on Clubhouse. In particular, conspiracy theories related to the coronavirus and the anti-vaccination movement have been disseminated through Clubhouse. It has also been reported that Clubhouse has hosted anti-Semitism, LGBTQ+ hate speech, and false health claims. In terms of relations between speakers and listeners, the unique connections that Clubhouse offers its influencers and their fans can strengthen parasocial bonds but can also create new outlets for misinformation and abuse. One journalist interrogated Kevin Hart on questionable moments of his career through a Clubhouse room but was unable to conduct the interview properly due to frequent interruptions from other users defending him. While users can affect influencers, the inverse is arguably the app's most controversial and worrying feature. Elon Musk has been criticized for encouraging his Clubhouse listeners to invest in GameStop and cryptocurrencies like bitcoins or dogecoin, assets that he has financial ties with. Within Clubhouse, influencers wield exponentially more power and not necessarily for the better as their self-interests aren't always aligned with the general public's.

Disinformation

A form of disinformation conducted by some users on the app is online impersonation. Notable celebrity figures such as Tim Cook and Elon Musk have been impersonated on the app by users who are in fact not the individuals previously mentioned. A clubhouse user, MC Hammer, has petitioned to the company via Twitter to implement a “real name” policy in order to prevent impersonators from using the platform to perform these acts of disinformation.

Accessibility

Accessibility has been a growing concern of Clubhouse. First, Clubhouse is exclusive in nature due to its invite process; this can lead to a lack of diversity and inclusivity for groups who are typically left out of conversations. Part of the appeal of the app is its “invite” set up. The users of this app include: tech elites/celebrities, high performers of hustle culture, and the privileged. Additionally, Clubhouse is only available on iPhones, which makes the app less accessible due to the cost associated with purchasing an iPhone, making Clubhouse favored among upper class users. Additionally, the app's design excludes people with disabilities. Since it is an audio chat app, those who are d/Deaf cannot access the app; there is also a lack of support for live captioning which would allow those hard of hearing to access the app. On top of the accessibility issue for those hard of hearing, the visibility for those with vision issues is a problem; the app does not support text resizing and has difficult to read text. This app is one that would typically appeal to people with vision issues, as it is an audio chat app, but the design of the app actually makes it less friendly for those individuals. When designing an app, it is important to consider who can access it. “Accessibility should not be an afterthought, but rather a priority a necessity.”