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Clubhouse requires contact list in order to get invites, which are required to sign up right now. I get why they are doing this, and it caused me to share my c
by bredren 6y ago
Clubhouse requires contact list in order to get invites, which are required to sign up right now.
I get why they are doing this, and it caused me to share my contacts with them.
However, I resented it and it put me immediately in a defensive posture with the product and company.
There is no possible way to trust a company with your contact list and Apple should make it how Photos works now--where you can select which data to share. There are some folks I don't even want to possibly find in a social app.
- post_break 6y agoI mean this is why they do it. You knew it was wrong, you knew they were going to take that data and mine it, and you still said sure.
- arkitaip 6y agoFomo is a helluva drug.
- bogwog 6y agoIn my case, I don't even remember giving them permission to use my contacts, yet I got accepted because one of my contacts sent me an invite. I might have given them permission without realizing it, but what could've also happened is that they saw my phone number in someone else's contact list, and assumed we were contacts.
- evanmoran 6y agoYou probably didn’t share, as I didn’t. I believe the contacts permission is only required if you want to share an invite, not to accept one.
- ganstyles 6y agoCorrect. I've been a member for going on a year now and I have scores of invites I don't appear to be able to send because I won't share my contacts. Not that I care enough to invite people, but it's a dark pattern to even require it. I have heard there's a way to share invites without sharing contacts, but I haven't cared enough to even do a cursory search on that.
- chipsa 6y agounsync your contacts from whatever service provider you're using, make sure they're gone, go ahead and share the contacts (which are now empty) with Clubhouse, get the invites, then revert everything back?
- kzrdude 6y agoThey do it because all the successful social apps need to make contact discovery easy. The ones that don't use this trick - ethical - we don't hear so much about, maybe they don't succeed.
- forgotmypw17 6y agoThere are quite a few that have not done it. I don't think it's necessary for success at all. HN seems to be doing pretty well, and it's never done this sort of thing, as far as I know. Reddit never did it during their growth phase, instead they provided their own seed content. Metafilter has never done anything unethical to my knowledge. There are many, many successful social networks which have not performed unethical contact harvesting and other shady things.
- skinnymuch 6y agoClubhouse raised money at a billion dollar valuation. Hacker News specifically and Metafilter aren’t in the same stratosphere
- forgotmypw17 6y agoWhat are you trying to say? That because they have a lot of VC money riding on it, they have to do "growth hacking" in order to justify the funds and grow quickly enough to satisfy the investors? Well, I guess I have to agree.
- skinnymuch 6y agoI assumed the OP saying successful social apps as in successful to the point of being known by at least some average people. Metafilter and Hacker News are both very niche and tiny. Hacker News doesn’t have the same business model as others either. It’s to help the namesake incubator. It succeeds with that. Getting contacts etc wouldn’t benefit Hacker News. Hacker News could lose a decent amount of money yearly without any prospect of breaking even and still be run. Most other apps of any kind can’t be run that way, including Reddit and Metafilter.
- tonylemesmer 6y agoThat means that more than likely clubhouse have our details even if we have no desire to be part of it.
- srockets 6y agoIt’d be fun once they’ll have EU presence.
- jimkleiber 6y agoI think they had a wave of people join from Germany either earlier this month or last month, so I imagine there are already plenty of Europeans on the app. Plus, doesn't GDPR apply even if there's just one user who resides in the EU?
- srockets 6y agoHaving European data subjects is enough ground to ask them to abide by the GDPR. But assume they won't, then you'll have to go to a European court, which could rule whatever, but it can't do much to a company that has no money or persons in the EU to collect from.
- jimkleiber 6y agoYup, I've been wondering just how inept national and local government seem to be in regulating a global internet. Seems that if we want to have global internet, we eventually might have to come up with a more coherent form of global governance.
- jancsika 6y agoAre you writing that to emphasize the urgency for the government to pass legislation to reign in unregulated online casinos as they continue refining their dark patterns? (I.e., without legislation, these companies will continue finding more and more sophisticated ways to get the user to act against their own interest.) Or do you mean imply that a practical approach to reign in unregulated online casinos is to spread the message of, "Just Say No," in web forum comments to the ostensible addicts? Or to be fair, something else entirely? My point is I can't tell without context there whether you are sympathizing with the user ("ah yes, something needs to be done because they've found your weak spot"), or chastising them for not having the force of will to resist dark patterns. Edit: clarification
- DevKoala 6y agoNot the poster you are replying to, but I stopped feeling empathy for people who complaint about lack of privacy, yet willingly give up their data to non-essential services that ask for it with all the proper disclosures. If you agreed to sharing all your contacts to listen to “musical tweets”, I don’t see why you’ll be complaining. You willingly made a trade off.
- WA 6y ago... willingly give up other peoples‘ data.
- DevKoala 6y agoExactly. What a jerk right? “Oh noes I had to give up all of my contact’s personal information... but I got into that beta!!”
- bonoboTP 6y agoSocial status is a hell of a drug. Clubhouse is a place where people like Elon Musk and famous successful scientists and businesspeople hang out so all the hustler startup get-rich people want to be on board. It's exclusive, it's just for fancy iPhone users. Finally an elite place where you can only get in by invite, most cannot resist. If they miss out on the bandwagon, how can they call themselves an early adopter on the bleeding edge? What will their friends thi k of them? Almost as if they used Android or something.
- toss1 6y agoAnd this tells me that there is a need for another step up for this app - to not only poison the contacts, but to temporarily 1) backup => 2) delete => 2a) share poisoned list => 3) restore contacts. So we can share the list, but they'll never get our real contacts, only trash data. Enough use it, maybe they'll stop
- a3n 6y agoBut wouldn't this company have to periodically review your contacts, to slurp up new ones?
- toss1 6y agoYup, probably their next move would be to require constant access to contacts list and check whenever the app runs. The next move on this side would be to keep contacts in a separate app from the std Android/Apple app, and then have to make calls, texts, etc. from there. If only there weren't so many sociopaths running these companies... sorry, wrong planet
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago> Clubhouse requires contact list in order to get invites, which are required to sign up right now How is this GDPR compliant?
- numpad0 6y agoWhy would you want to be GDPR compliant?
- bdcravens 6y agoTo avoid substantial financial risk.
- calvinmorrison 6y agoHas the EU sued and won against any company who is not located in the EU?
- otterley 6y agoThat's not a good test, because the law is still relatively new, and it takes a while for litigation to make its way through the system. We also don't necessarily know who has settled out of court. Would you like to be a test case for us?
- calvinmorrison 6y agoI would love to be a test case on it, I am not in a position. I'd be extremely interested for a company who doesn't operate in the EUs being brought to court and what other countries are willing to help the EU exercise those judgements if any.
- drclau 6y agoBecause in European Union it is regulation, and you (as a company) are fined if you are not compliant. I recommend having a look over the Wikipedia page on the subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regula...
- JMTQp8lwXL 6y agoIt's disingenuous of them to say they "have to" do contact upload. Why can't I type in a phone number to invite? Completely hostile. Consequently, I have invited nobody.
- paul7986 6y agoWould never sign up or use a service that has such an invasive requirement..I only use my google voice number for any type of public to even dating transaction. Spam and robocall that all you want which I surprising never receive/received many such calls.
- woadwarrior01 6y agoI have an old iPhone with an empty address book for testing dodgy apps that require contacts access, I use that for sending Clubhouse invites. OTOH, Clubhouse seem work fine on my primary phone, where I haven't given it contacts access.
- Haemm0r 6y agoFor Android I can recommend "Shelter"[1] which lets you setup a work profile, so you dont have to share your contacts, files, etc.. Downside: If you have already a work profile, it does not work (Android allows only one work profile) [1] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.typeblog.shelter/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.typeblog.shelter/
- IG_Semmelweiss 6y agonice find. is there a list of known existing "big brother" apps ? or is it just as good to look at app permissions to figure this out ?
- xxyzz 6y agoThat means some Chinese apps: https://github.com/PeterCxy/Shelter#features--use-cases https://github.com/PeterCxy/Shelter#features--use-cases
- lupire 6y agoIf your invitees don't also have a spare iPhone, what's the point of inviting them? They'll have the same problem with no workaround?
- woadwarrior01 6y agoYou don't need to grant the Clubhouse app access to your contacts to use it. ATM, that's only needed to invite people.
- gherkinnn 6y agoI did the same and I’m still annoyed at myself. Clubhouse is pretty shit, really. So I sold my soul and got nothing in return.
- bredren 6y agoThanks for sharing this. I have similar feelings about the product, but am curious to hear your reasons in detail first if you'll share them.
- gherkinnn 6y agoThe one thing that got me interested is them using a photo as the app icon. Intriguing. Maybe there's some fun to be had. The rest was of no real interest to me. Silly, but here we are. Trivialities aside, the content is not for me. It's either some self-help thing or a get rich fast scheme. And I don't care about either. Worse though is the content delivery. They talk so much and say so little. Horrible. It really is this: > Clubhouse is C tier people listening to B tier people talk about A tier people And here I am, a D tier person not wanting to be part of this circlejerk.
- bredren 6y agoThanks for that feedback. I noticed the app icon as well. I wondered who it was, but didn’t look into it. I’m in agreement about the content. The “entrepreneurship” culture on Clubhouse seems to be either VC / media worship or this hustle thing. I joined a "Real Estate Money" group that was pitching $500 investments in shared AirBnB properties. It had calling cards of a scammy “investment” group. A mix of cheerleading and leadership-enriching sales to suckers. I spent some time last night in some social groups and while entertaining from a sort of shock value perspective they were not well moderated. They would not work with bigger audiences. Andrew Sorkin interviewed Bill Gates on Clubhouse on Friday. My eyes widened when I saw that, I questioned my initial assessment of the product and it’s velocity. Then I realized I was thinking of Aaron Sorkin. Andrew is some mainstream media journalist. I doubt Gates gave a hoot about the medium. I think VC, media and “influencers” all slept on TikTok and are now overcompensating with involvement on Clubhouse. It’s better suited to them anyway, and it matches the atmosphere of conferences. It is the type of activity PG labeled “playing house” and is perhaps well suited as a stand in for puffery, fakery and “influence.” Regarding content delivery, it is like you read my mind. I’d describe Clubhouse content, even purportedly serious stuff, as awash in loquaciousness word salad. Clubhouse content forces listeners to be beholden to linear progression. So you lost the most valuable thing about audio content found in podcasts: editing and people who have developed the skills to be engaging. Clubhouse lacks the crucial “trick play” of podcasts, where you can option out of minutes of content (and ads) at any time. So anyhow, I regret sharing the address book with them and took my lumps ITT for admitting as much. However, I don’t regret trying it. Critically evaluating nascent platforms and technology is what I do.
- sneak 6y agoWhen you leak your contacts, you harm others, not just yourself. This, among other reasons, is why I never give out the number of my SIM card, or my residential address, et c, to anyone. They're just going to click "allow" and give it to a thousand shady companies, starting with Facebook. I never give people data I don't want stored in my shadow profile.
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago> When you leak your contacts, you harm others, not just yourself. As Eben Moglen puts it, privacy is ecological, not transactional. See http://snowdenandthefuture.info/PartIII.html http://snowdenandthefuture.info/PartIII.html
- antipaul 6y agoApp Store guidelines forbid using the Contacts for anything except the intended purpose: https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/06/12/apple-disallows-developers-from-collecting-and-sharing-contacts-data https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/06/12/apple-disallows-d... Do we give CH the benefit of the doubt =p ? In any case, I also hope (and expect) Apple to implement better controls for sharing contacts. EDIT: Typo
- koboll 6y agoHuh, so Clubhouse is explicitly breaking Apple's rules. Surely Apple knows this, but is allowing it because... it's mega-popular? What's the point of having rules if clawing your way to popularity by leveraging their violation is deemed permissible?
- jtsiskin 6y agoHow are they breaking the rules? It seems like they are using it for the same purpose they prompt permissions for.
- csommers 6y agoThey create ghost profiles for those contacts, just in case that user ever signs up. That’s fucking garbage and they should be ashamed of doing that, let alone immediately removed from the App Store.
- _jal 6y agoClubhouse can bite me. I refuse to use tooling from shitbags who try to exort me into compromising others' privacy for shiny toys. I know other shops do it, as if that makes it OK.
- Aerroon 6y agoI remember signing up for Facebook back in the day. They tried to get me to share something about my email contacts list. That just made me not use Facebook instead. Unfortunately, everyone else didn't seem to have a problem with it.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- bonoboTP 6y agoNormal people value their social standing and their relationships, bragging rights etc. higher than abstract principles. It's only loners who will resist. Popular people will be on board because they manage their brand and image instinctively. Wannabe popular too.
- 0x0 6y agoFacebook literally had a box on their web site asking for your email address and email account password, so they could log in to your webmail and scrape your contacts.
- f430 6y agoServer is in the People's Republic of China to boot. But I know we have many wumaos and apologists here on HN because they tasted blood money.
- TedDoesntTalk 6y agoI mean, unless you're a newbie to the internet, how is this possible?
- hshshs2 6y agoplease reconsider doing this next time if you’re able to
- the-dude 6y agoWhat about dividing your contacts into circles and only give permission to a specific set?
- mandelbrotwurst 6y agoSure, as long as it’s possible to create a circle containing only one contact, the way giving permission to access photos now works on iOS.
- skeletonjelly 6y agoGoogle+ anyone?
- satya71 6y agoHere's how to get around Clubhouse uploading contacts. We shouldn't have to do this, but here we are. 1. Disable contacts for all your configured accounts 2. Add a dummy Gmail account, enable contacts. 3. Add invitee to dummy account 4. Give contacts access to Clubhouse 5. Send invite 6. Remove contact access 7. enable contacts disabled in 1
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dehrmann 6y agoFirst I have to keep a burner number with a real sim card for things that require signup, now I have to keep a burner phone with no contacts?
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- styfle 6y agoI was kinda confused at first to see the top suggestions were all Doctor’s Offices. Then I figured it out. https://twitter.com/styfle/status/1358186671007760385 https://twitter.com/styfle/status/1358186671007760385
- lucb1e 6y agoThey did something bad and yet here we are. I don't know what Clubhouse is, but I'm somewhat tempted to look it up. Marketing: successful. (I won't, in an attempt to counter that effect of growing due to negative publicity, but I find it noteworthy how well it works.)
- MikeGale 6y agoShould you not tell your contacts that you gave their details to Clubhouse?
- crossroadsguy 6y agoOr a feature implementation which would essentially means - "select fake/random data instead". Fake/mock GPS (w/o telling the app that it's fake unlike what Android does), fake contacts etc.
- xtat 6y agoOpsecLeaksHouse
- stjohnswarts 6y agoIt's not really understandable. It should be an opt in with and OR "I would like these 10 people who are important to me to be on the list you look at, not these other 400 people who I've taken the phone number of at some point"