19 ms·

Clubhouse doesn’t value privacy, security or accessibility

176 points by laurex 6y ago

Invictus0 6y ago
The calculus on privacy is simple. Would you rather be a $4B company that used shady methods to get users, and pay a small fine; or, be a $0 company that followed all the rules right into the graveyard? All the old hypergrowth network companies used these shady tactics to get their users; now they want to solidify their moat by banning the same tactics for other companies. I'm not saying that a company can never succeed by following all the rules--just that it's a lot less likely. Have we learned nothing from 2008? The only thing that is going to deter white collar crimes is jail time--everything else is just the cost of doing business.
- sthnblllII 6y ago
  Thats not going to happen as long as people keep electing politicians whose largest donors are Facebook co-founders. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/10/22/elec-o22.html https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/10/22/elec-o22.html
- pyrale 6y ago
  > a $4B company Small correction: a company that acquired capital at a $4bn valuation. As VCs are well known to shore up countless failures with few overwhelming successes, That valuation is essentially useless. If you want a correct valuation, you'll have to wait and see what employees get for their shares.
  - ohgodplsno 6y ago
    Founders don't give a single damn about the employees. They'll be doing lines of cokes on company budget, and walk away with a fat load of cash even if it fails. VC has never been for the employees, and never will be.
incadenza 6y ago
I think they’ve correctly learned that these concerns aren’t sufficient to prevent users from flocking to the next new app that their friends are using.
88840-8855 6y ago
I have used that app for 3 minutes and lost interest. What is your impression, is the app growing, useage-wise & feature-wise?
- ilrwbwrkhv 6y ago
  i would actually love a video app where people can discuss and debate on a livestream with a reddit like categorization.
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    Why? Audio and video are so low bandwidth in terms of information, especially for a debate. With text and forums, I can go through links, numerous counter arguments, skip past trolls within seconds.
    - SilverRed 6y ago
      What information are you talking about? For a simple list of facts? Sure. But there is so much more you are getting. An hour spent on a discord call with friends transfers a whole lot more information than an hour spent typing messages to each other.
      - lotsofpulp 6y ago
        Personal interactions with an acquaintance in real time might be beneficial for some things, but as a spectator, written back and forth is much more efficient. Prime example is how HN comments contain a wealth of information compared to the articles they link to. I gain absolutely nothing from hearing or watching someone speak, except for wasting my time. I’d rather read their transcript and the ensuing discussion for a quicker, more balanced view of the situation (assuming the people in the discussion are qualified to discuss).
xbar 6y ago
The model is working as intended.
azinman2 6y ago
Clearly this author has never tried to create a social network. It’s crazy hard, the network effect chicken and egg is really really really hard to crack. Unless you use basic tactics to reduce friction as much as possible, how else are you going to grow from nothing? It’s also very strange to talk about SV and backers as if they’re some homogenous group. A diversity of skill sets, ethos, and methods exist. Many founders are going at it for the first time. And financial backers aren’t usually technically literate to warn about incrementing ids in SQL. They want to know how fast you’re growing and the business prospects. If we start creating laws around these things, then it’ll only be even tougher for up-comers to challenge the existing big players. It would be great if the mobile platforms could proxy contacts to at least solve that privacy problem while also being reasonable in their usage, but all new companies have to find some way into people’s hearts and minds that easily will forget about a new app within 10m of existing their first usage.
- tpxl 6y ago
  > If we start creating laws around these things, then it’ll only be even tougher for up-comers to challenge the existing big players This is such an unimaginative take. Laws could easily demand easy export of _all your_ data and interoperability of chat systems.
  - leesalminen 6y ago
    How do you foresee that working? Would the government publish a standard API for all chat systems? Would chat system makers have to build a bridge for every single messenger ever made, even if it only has 1k users? I just don’t see how the law can make apps interoperable without huge barriers of entry that would benefit the incumbents.
    - 3np 6y ago
      Laws shouldn’t name names but properties, such as: Fully documented and available APIs where first-party clients or front-ends can not rely on undisclosed endpoints. For a chat app, that would just mean using en existing solution like XMPP or Matrix and provide API documentation for any added deltas. The less you touch user data, the less you have to think about this.
blfr 6y ago
If public opinion and attitudes about privacy and security have really evolved significantly since Mark Zuckerberg launched the Ivy League-only TheFacebook.com, they would be moving to Signal in droves. They aren't. Most people don't care. I convince friends occasionally but the privacy argument does next to nothing. The gif search, reactions, and MMS handling are all better selling points.
- x0x0 6y ago
  The article is just shockingly poor. to wit > or provide any way for users to exercise their data protection rights the privacy policy, in fact, does. Per it's update date of 5 April -- before the publication of this article on 28 April -- the privacy policy says > Please log in to your account or contact us (at support@alphaexplorationco.com) if you need to change or correct your Personal Data, or if you wish to delete your account. Not to mention the persistent use of single companies and their actions used to malign every startup. See, eg, the article about clearview. (If the author weren't lazy, they probably would have realized clearview is not actually a silicon valley company: it's in ny, and the primary investors are Kirenaga partners, an east coast vc firm. So really only tenuous connections to sillicon valley)
- SilverRed 6y ago
  They care, just not enough to uproot their lives and drop their communication with other people on the platform. That's where Apple and governments come in and simply make tracking unviable.
  - zepto 6y ago
    Apple will soon be prevented from doing that when they are forced to open the App Store.
    - saurik 6y ago
      We shouldn't be looking to Apple as our biased replacement for a government; they also, for example, pull apps that poke at how iPhones are made in sweatshops... that they occasionally move to do something someone finds valuable doesn't exonerate them or forgive how much power they have accumulated.
da_big_ghey 6y ago
is not a captioning hard for machine to make correct still? i am not too aware of how developing are in this space.
- x0x0 6y ago
  Yes. it's... something how this article links to folks that just assume it's easy to do, and do well. Let alone in real time.
- Rebelgecko 6y ago
  The various online video conferencing apps do a pretty good job at it
  - jfk13 6y ago
    I suppose it depends on the speaker, but I wouldn't generally describe the examples I've seen as "a pretty good job". Seems to me there's a long way to go...
  - x0x0 6y ago
    ime, not actually a great job, even with native english speakers. Let alone with accented english. And Zoom et al have a hell of a lot more resources than clubhouse, which per linkedin is currently 42 people. Microsoft didn't buy nuance for $20B because accurate speech-to-text is easy.
carlosdp 6y ago
A lot of these criticisms are trying to attribute mal-intent to what in reality is almost certainly that the founders aren't super-humans who got everything technically right out of the gate... Also > The app has since been banned in China after hosting conversations about alleged Uighur internment camps and other politically controversial subjects, which could clearly have put activists and dissidents at risk. I see this argument sometimes for apps, and I feel like it should be made more clear that it's the Chinese government putting these people at risk of harm, not the apps. Asking for security from a super-power state actor as a baseline for creating a social media app means only Facebook, Google, and Twitter get to ever make social media apps. > The data referred to is all public profile information from our app, which anyone can access via the app or our API.” Davidson was essentially defending “scraping” — the practice of extracting publicly available, non-copyrighted data from the Web. Whether technically a breach or not, the incident has breached the trust of many of its users, who did not reasonably expect their information to be used in this way. You can do the same thing with every Instagram account or Facebook or <insert basically every social media platform>. The platform is designed for people to be visible and share. You know that whatever you put in your bio can be seen by anyone on Clubhouse in a room you are in, or in search. I don't see how this can be made private without defeating the whole purpose of the product. And I also don't see how this violates privacy when no such privacy was offered. > Scraping is the same technique that controversial start-up Clearview AI, popular with law enforcement, has used to amass its facial recognition database. It's also the same method used by Google to give you search results, like what the hell are we talking about here? Also Clubhouse didn't do any scraping. That's being lost here in this weird comparison. > The audio app, only available to iPhone users, was designed and deployed with virtually no accommodations for individuals who are deaf, hard of hearing, visually impaired or who have certain other disabilities. Competitors such as Twitter Spaces, while not perfect, at least allow users to turn on captions and share transcripts, among other features, demonstrating that accessibility in audio apps is possible Yea, because Twitter is a multi-billion dollar public company with an established and experienced engineering organization with top experts in AI. Clubhouse was started a year ago and only just started reaching hyper growth in January. The contention here is you need to get this all correct out of the gate, which realistically only one of the big tech companies could actually pull off. > And while it is one thing to ask people to go without their Facebook or Google products and services, now that these platforms have become so embedded in their daily life, it is another to ask them to abstain from Clubhouse. In this moment, before users have a compelling need to be on these platforms (because everyone else is there), and before Clubhouse becomes too big to fail, we still have a choice. I'm confused, so we don't like that Facebook and Google own all of our digital interactions, but you also need to have Facebook and Google-level resources before it's ok for you to try launching a social media product? Clubhouse reportedly turned down a $4b buyout from Twitter potentially, doing exactly what people have been saying they wish happened with Instagram or WhatsApp, but still they're doing it wrong. Damned if you do, damned if you don't, I suppose.
superasn 6y ago
The only lesson learned by most founders is it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission. Be it airbnb or reddit almost all companies have employed one shady tactic or another to grow and maybe once the site is pretty popular they maybe take some steps to fix these issues on surface and hopefully people will forget about such things soon (1) (1) https://davegooden.com/2011/05/how-airbnb-became-a-billion-dollar-company/ https://davegooden.com/2011/05/how-airbnb-became-a-billion-d...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
areoform 6y ago
I have tried to provide an alternative take on ClubHouse, but it seems that people are hyper-polarized when it comes to the application. Which is strange as it has provided me with the most authentic experiences I've ever had on the internet. This is a bit shameless, but here's an excerpt from my exegesis - https://areoform.wordpress.com/2021/04/18/on-clubhouse/ https://areoform.wordpress.com/2021/04/18/on-clubhouse/, > Which brings me to the role of ClubHouse as a generator of profound experiences. Some nights ago, an ex-TLA (Three Letter Agency) officer walked into the room, sparking a conversation about strategic elicitation (brought up by me) and empathy for difficult people (brought up by him). Our conversation was interrupted by an admittedly troubled person angry about the “plandemic,” spoiling for a fight. In text, we would have ignored him – he had been banned from most social media platforms. Or, given in and argued with him, but it was clear that he was deeply upset. And so we talked. > He was a struggling musician. Who had lost his living when the pandemic hit and the symphonies shut down. The world was a harsh place for him. He was also one of the few people in the world who had mastered a very particular instrument brought into prominence by Beethoven. And so we begged him to play. To share his gift with us. He obliged by playing a beautifully complex piece of music that demonstrated his mastery over the instrument. We thanked him. Said our goodbyes, and went to sleep. > A charged situation was transmuted into the magical. Yes, it's flawed, but I'm glad that it exists. There's a unique energy in the air, when it comes to ClubHouse. There's something magical about it. I'm worried that it too will get lost to entropy and the casual cruelty of crowds. (it's harder to be cruel when people know each other)
- loceng 6y ago
  It may not even have been that you would have ignored him if via text, but that they may not have been as engaged or been able to read your genuine concern or attention - reading your response in whatever projected tone he believed someone/everyone would treat him. These tools can be used or wielded either as weapons or for healing-learning. I think we're just beginning to organize to understand after the clusterfuck of the experience of Facebook and the current mainstream status quo "social media." Likewise decoupling someone's reach by providing video services - whether live or recorded - and not being dependant on mainstream media to determine who's messages get out, and how long they can be, along with rehumanizing it, faces and voice being more engaging than simply test, is what we needed; where an individual like Joe Rogan acts a curator to expose interesting guests to share their story for 2-4 hours - essentially creating/expanding nodes of leadership - whether entertaining, educational, or role modelling. I think whatever experience people have on Clubhouse will fully depend on the context, the curators, and so ultimately how Clubhouse or such platforms are governed; along with how access to the information is managed, if all the most popular people start putting their content behind walled gardens then that's arguably a problem - or then we allow privacy if anyone is trying to extract too much, whatever is considered unreasonable.
Barrin92 6y ago
It's no surprise that Clubhouse values none of the things presented in the title because it's completely orthogonal to what makes Clubhouse 'valuable'. It's like saying "Elsevier is a billion dollar business despite being unfriendly to readers, researchers, and limiting access to human knowledge". No that's the reason, why in the logic of our economic system they have any price attached to them. Clubhouse's entire value proposition is artificial scarcity. It's the NFT of social networks. Take something that is abundant and cheap in the world of software (communication, space, room size) etc, and artificially bog it down to create a zero-sum game of status. It's basically 'un-innovation' for a lack of a better term. Technically there's nothing in Clubhouse that if it doesn't already exist anywhere else cannot be copied in five minutes. All the things clubhouse places limits on already are abundant, which is why their market value is, ironically enough, 0.
- areoform 6y ago
  Except that's not true, having experienced it, I would say that ClubHouse produces intimacy as a service. I've had magical conversations on the application that I've never had anywhere else. Saying that it's just another product and that it can be copied in 5 minutes is missing the point. The choices that they've made, their decision to eschew everything except for voice, help create a medium that is intimate, thoughtful, and kind. And otherwise busy people are addicted to it. Someone I know said that talking on ClubHouse felt like being back at Stanford. Just the electrifying conversations. The sense of possibility. There's something special here. Recently, I decided that I'd like to interview a cosmonaut who has never been interviewed by the west before. To tell his story before a broader audience. And I started a ClubHouse room to do it, and people from around the world came together to help me. Including people who knew him! I'm just a stranger, but they heard me explain why I wanted to preserve this man's legacy and that was enough. People were happy to chip in and help. That's magical. And I haven't experienced anything like that before. There's this profound sense of intimacy that this platform produces that's missing elsewhere. I keep repeating myself, but there is something here. It's a mistake to discount it.
  - exogeny 6y ago
    It's hard for me to think of anything less niche than "like being at Stanford" given the extreme, tech-focused, affluent, bourgeois-as-fuck description that implies. The average person doesn't want to spend hours listening to thought leaders who are in love with their own voice pontificating randomly on topics that don't affect or address their lives in any way. To believe that they will to such an extent that A16Z is willing to give them a $4B given zero revenue, declining traction, and no clear business shows that all you need to do to gain ever-increasing valuations in the tech world is to serve up the exact kind of frou-frou, nebulous bullshit that you wrote and that VCs eat up.
comodore_ 6y ago
this piece starts very low by quoting Kevin Rose the chief censorist anti free speech activist from the nyt and continues in that vein, very underwhelming.
throw7 6y ago
Are you in da club? Alpha Exploration is born and it's where ya wanna be. It ain't where you go for delusion, it's reality. Gonna get reason, you'll find me in da club, bottle full of cause, it's got what you need, if you ain't into makin' love. So come give it a chance, if you into verity.
mwcampbell 6y ago
As a partial response to the part about accessibility, Clubhouse is now quite accessible to blind people, and a growing proportion of the online blind community is embracing it. Here's a podcast episode about Clubhouse from a blindness perspective: https://mosen.org/episode-99-all-you-need-to-know-about-clubhouse-from-a-blindness-perspective/ https://mosen.org/episode-99-all-you-need-to-know-about-club... Of course, the fact that it excludes deaf people is still a concern.
- bpodgursky 6y ago
  > Of course, the fact that it excludes deaf people is still a concern. I don't even understand this. What are you suggesting? That auto-captioning be mandatory for all voice applications? The technology is only barely there, and is crazy expensive to consume unless you've developed the tech in-house (ie, Google). What about Discord or just normal phones -- are those fine? If you're just saying "have text-only channels" I don't understand the point of using Clubhouse in the first place. There are a ton of great text-only messaging platforms.
  - mwcampbell 6y ago
    > If you're just saying "have text-only channels" I don't understand the point of using Clubhouse in the first place. There are a ton of great text-only messaging platforms. And that's why I'm staying away from Clubhouse as long as I can. I believe that we should prefer text for important discussions, so as not to leave people out. We're still learning how to effectively have online discussions in text, but I think it's too soon to give up on it and retreat to relying on audio.
    - jazzyjackson 6y ago
      You wouldn't believe how many people you're leaving out by expecting anyone to sit in front of a screen and read and write text comments. Even if you can read and type fast, a lot of people don't care to sit on forums and squint at their screen, typing out their ideas on little iphone keyboards. The friction to hearing and expressing ideas is way lower via audio chat. It's just a different population than everyone here, content to read text and compose replies. I also don't know why you brought in "important discussions" - while I had a great 3 hour conversation last night on how to resolve disputes without authorities, I joined a room just because I saw some friends there playing "never have I ever", I didn't go seeking out an important discussion but I had one anyway, that's what gets people talking about their positive experience - the spontaneity and unexpected outcomes of it.
jonas21 6y ago
I promised myself that I'd stop wasting time getting into internet arguments. And to be honest, I don't even like Clubhouse. But this article is full of so many bad-faith arguments that I just can't. Here are a few examples: > It is clear that Clubhouse was not designed with privacy in mind. The app, which initially launched without a privacy policy, To support this claim, the author links to a Twitter thread [1] where someone first says there is no privacy policy, then someone else provides a link to it, then the first person shows a video that appears to show a broken Privacy link on the Clubhouse website -- a web site that nobody visits because Clubhouse is an app. As far as I know, the in-app link to the privacy policy and the link on the App Store have always worked -- this is one of the things that Apple consistently checks before approving an app. So somehow, having a broken link becomes they "launched without a privacy policy". You might say, well, maybe the author didn't read the Twitter thread carefully. But who was the person on Twitter who pointed out that Clubhouse does, in fact, have a Privacy Policy? It was Elizabeth Renieris -- the same Elizabeth Renieris who wrote the article! In other words, she's completely aware that her claim is untrue, yet she makes it anyway. > Instead, Clubhouse is yet another example of technology designed by, and largely for, privileged, white, Western and able-bodied men. First, this ignores the fact only one of the two founders of Clubhouse is white -- the other is a brown immigrant from a non-Western country. I doubt the author is unaware of this, and is simply reclassifying asians as "white" because it supports her narrative. Secondly, attempting to paint the founders as ablist because they don't yet support captioning is both heartbreaking and absurd. One founder has a daughter who was born with a genetic defect that causes severe disabilities, and he has put a tremendous amount of effort raising awareness and fundraising for this [2]. He's literally the last person you'd accuse of holding a prejudice against the disabled. Finally, at least in my experience, Clubhouse seems to have created a community where minorities and women are welcomed and play a prominent role in leading and moderating discussions. The claim that Clubhouse is designed largely for white men seems... completely unsupported. [1] https://twitter.com/wbm312/status/1360044616217628677 https://twitter.com/wbm312/status/1360044616217628677 [2] https://www.lydianaccelerator.org/ https://www.lydianaccelerator.org/
- solipsism 6y ago
  attempting to paint the founders as ablist because they don't yet support captioning is both heartbreaking and absurd. One founder has a daughter who was born with a genetic defect This isn't a good point. You can have a disabled daughter and still produce an app that excludes large groups of differently abled folks. He's literally the last person you'd accuse of holding a prejudice against the disabled. No, he's not, because that's a naive way of thinking about prejudice. Also, hilariously, you are saying he's even less likely to be prejudiced than people who themselves are disabled.
mrkramer 6y ago
Privacy is the thing that everybody talks about but nobody has it. Move on. Btw Clubhouse being worth $4bn?! New Studio 54?
gkoberger 6y ago
This article makes me wonder if we'll ever see another social network ever again. Our opinions on privacy and security have shifted dramatically (for the better, in my opinion), however imagine an author writing about Facebook a year in under a 2021 lens. Facebook (and others) grew because a lack of privacy and security was the goal. Images were public and tagged, conversations were viewable by anyone, the minifeed made it easy to see every change people made, etc. It was exclusive (college only) but also very public. The high amount of content and low amount of friction made it spread virally. Now it's much more locked down, but that's okay... it already hit a critical mass. The current consensus about privacy and security seem to be at odds with what's necessary to make a social network work. The ability to connect with anyone at any time with no friction is what makes social networks thrive, but also what enables harassment and abuse. I think it's likely we've already seen the last great social network.
- halfmatthalfcat 6y ago
  Social networks are not a homogenous group. You have broadcast social networks like Instagram and Twitter. You have community-based social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn and Discord. Clubhouse is just another twist on a community-esque one. Will we ever see a social network at Facebook's scale? Probably not. Will we see more social networks at the Twitter/Discord level, I bet we will.
- SilverRed 6y ago
  Discord is relatively new and rose up out of nothing very quickly. IMO, facebook/twitter style social networks just suck. They simply aren't a good idea. Instant messaging and VOIP is the greatest format for socializing. I'd much rather spend an hour in a voice call with a group of friends than scroll instagram.
  - spideymans 6y ago
    > IMO, facebook/twitter style social networks just suck. Facebook/Twitter-style social networks were great until the point they started being "curated" (aka optimized for revenue). Once that happened, they rapidly lost their utility as a tool to actually connect people, and decayed into a medium to deliver advertisements (whether they be banner-style ads, influencers or sponsored posts).
HenryBemis 6y ago
> It also demonstrates a growing chasm between attitudes in the United States and Europe about data governance Yes, in Europe we got GDPR. In the USA you got a bunch of jokes and jokers trading your data for peanutes. The disregards towards 'anything' is BAU.. "move fast, break things". I feel that in the USA many companies are in a money-grab. "We will fix it later", and the later becomes never. Because once you created 100 problems, you only 'invest' to fix the 'top 5' and only because an auditor/CISO told you so.
transitivebs 6y ago
Here's a visualization of 2.7M Clubhouse users data and their connections: https://clubhousesocialgraph.com https://clubhousesocialgraph.com Note: this is much larger than the data leak mentioned in this and other recent articles.
newscracker 6y ago
I do seriously care about these things, but I know I’m in a tiny minority living in a bubble that most others don’t understand or don’t care much about. > A truly innovative product would learn from the mistakes of predecessor platforms and would focus on things like privacy, security and accessibility. Privacy comes at a big cost to VC funded companies that have no business plan and focus on getting billions of users to profile and profit from. Security is becoming a lost cause with each passing day. The amount of personal data leaked online dwarfs the amount of personal data not leaked online (citation needed, but this is what it appears like to lay people). Accessibility is usually an afterthought that comes into focus after a billion (or two) users are captured to firm up valuations or when the threat of lawsuits arise in jurisdictions where that’s a possibility. > This is our opportunity to demand more and to demand better. After all, if Clubhouse users do not demand these things from the outset, why should the policy makers whom we ask to regulate these technologies care? Clubhouse users aren’t going to demand any of these just like Facebook users didn’t demand better from Facebook and its companies, and in the face of more abuse by the platform didn’t leave those. The revenue and profit numbers speak to the kind of addiction that these platforms manage to create and grow. Those who care are more likely not to use Clubhouse in the first place. Yet, policy makers do need to be reminded of their duty to protect people even if said people don’t understand or don’t seem to care.
- solipsism 6y ago
  policy makers do need to be reminded of their duty to protect people even if said people don’t understand or don’t seem to care. What's the argument for the government to care so much about privacy, if people don't? I get why we have banking protection laws. It would be extreme chaos if people's money could just disappear. But in what way is poor security and privacy practices more than a nuisance? I think people like us weigh this problem too heavily, because 1) we want to use apps and technology like these, 2) we really care a lot about doing it securely. But the public just doesn't care as much as us. Why should there be laws and policy just to suit our purposes?
stefan_ 6y ago
Maybe if you stop talking about it it will all just go away? https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=clubhouse https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=clubhouse
MattGaiser 6y ago
> A truly innovative product would learn from the mistakes of predecessor platforms and would focus on things like privacy, security and accessibility. These have been repeatedly demonstrated not to matter to large enough swaths of the population. That makes them irrelevant to growth unless you are targeting one of those particular niches.
slibhb 6y ago
There's an ongoing debate over whether people should be allowed to speak freely on the internet without "content moderation". Clubhouse is on one side of that debate, this author is on the other. Behind vague accusations of "not valuing privacy," that's what this article is actually about. > Rohan and Davison, who met at Stanford and have an estimated nine failed apps between them This feels nasty. More boring culture war stuff: > Clubhouse is yet another example of technology designed by, and largely for, privileged, white, Western and able-bodied men > In 2020, only 2.3 percent of all venture funding went to female founders (down from 2.8 percent in 2019, as women were hit harder by the pandemic)
- baryphonic 6y ago
  > Clubhouse is yet another example of technology designed by, and largely for, privileged, white, Western and able-bodied men Having used the app, I can say this one also seems particularly nasty because it's untrue. There is a lot of diversity on Clubhouse. And even a lot of wokeness. And even a lot of anti-wokeness. It all depends on where you look.
mybrid 6y ago
It's all about the Benjamins. VC's don't care about society at large, just the money they can make.
ummonk 6y ago
The scraping incidents with Clubhouse aren't really comparable with those of Facebook. All the Clubhouse profiles are public and searchable to everyone from within the app, so it's not really a big difference to privacy if they get scrape and people can search and look them up on a 3rd party website. By contrast, many profiles on Facebook are unlisted / private, and it's a major issue that the profile information was searchable by default via phone number, allowing for the mass scraping of non-public profiles.
blacktriangle 6y ago
While it's fun and easy to pick on Clubhouse lately, this is true of every new software business. A company can value privacy, security, and accessibility, but it still makes sense to value finding a viable sustainable business model more, particularly with the clock ticking as you burn through your funding. Privacy, security, and accessibility are difficult and expensive, and most often come at the cost of slowing down iteration on new functionality at the time when fast iteration is the most important. And no amount of money will buy you speed if every new feature needs to go through a whole accessibility review. If privacy, security, and accessibility advocates want to be taken seriously they need to stop bitching every chance they can and start offering solutions to developers to make it brain-dead simple to respect all 3 aspects while not slowing down the pace of development. Instead accessibility advocates seem to be more interested in criticizing every attempt at automating accessibility while acting incredulous when early stage startups aren't willing to pay them $300/hr to consult on UIs that may not even make it into production.

176 points by laurex 6y ago

The calculus on privacy is simple. Would you rather be a $4B company that used shady methods to get users, and pay a small fine; or, be a $0 company that followed all the rules right into the graveyard? All the old hypergrowth network companies used these shady tactics to get their users; now they want to solidify their moat by banning the same tactics for other companies. I'm not saying that a company can never succeed by following all the rules--just that it's a lot less likely. Have we learned nothing from 2008? The only thing that is going to deter white collar crimes is jail time--everything else is just the cost of doing business.

sthnblllII 6y ago
Thats not going to happen as long as people keep electing politicians whose largest donors are Facebook co-founders. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/10/22/elec-o22.html https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/10/22/elec-o22.html
pyrale 6y ago
> a $4B company Small correction: a company that acquired capital at a $4bn valuation. As VCs are well known to shore up countless failures with few overwhelming successes, That valuation is essentially useless. If you want a correct valuation, you'll have to wait and see what employees get for their shares.
- ohgodplsno 6y ago
  Founders don't give a single damn about the employees. They'll be doing lines of cokes on company budget, and walk away with a fat load of cash even if it fails. VC has never been for the employees, and never will be.

incadenza 6y ago

I think they’ve correctly learned that these concerns aren’t sufficient to prevent users from flocking to the next new app that their friends are using.

88840-8855 6y ago

I have used that app for 3 minutes and lost interest. What is your impression, is the app growing, useage-wise & feature-wise?

ilrwbwrkhv 6y ago
i would actually love a video app where people can discuss and debate on a livestream with a reddit like categorization.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  Why? Audio and video are so low bandwidth in terms of information, especially for a debate. With text and forums, I can go through links, numerous counter arguments, skip past trolls within seconds.
  - SilverRed 6y ago
    What information are you talking about? For a simple list of facts? Sure. But there is so much more you are getting. An hour spent on a discord call with friends transfers a whole lot more information than an hour spent typing messages to each other.
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      Personal interactions with an acquaintance in real time might be beneficial for some things, but as a spectator, written back and forth is much more efficient. Prime example is how HN comments contain a wealth of information compared to the articles they link to. I gain absolutely nothing from hearing or watching someone speak, except for wasting my time. I’d rather read their transcript and the ensuing discussion for a quicker, more balanced view of the situation (assuming the people in the discussion are qualified to discuss).

xbar 6y ago

The model is working as intended.

azinman2 6y ago

Clearly this author has never tried to create a social network. It’s crazy hard, the network effect chicken and egg is really really really hard to crack. Unless you use basic tactics to reduce friction as much as possible, how else are you going to grow from nothing? It’s also very strange to talk about SV and backers as if they’re some homogenous group. A diversity of skill sets, ethos, and methods exist. Many founders are going at it for the first time. And financial backers aren’t usually technically literate to warn about incrementing ids in SQL. They want to know how fast you’re growing and the business prospects. If we start creating laws around these things, then it’ll only be even tougher for up-comers to challenge the existing big players. It would be great if the mobile platforms could proxy contacts to at least solve that privacy problem while also being reasonable in their usage, but all new companies have to find some way into people’s hearts and minds that easily will forget about a new app within 10m of existing their first usage.

tpxl 6y ago
> If we start creating laws around these things, then it’ll only be even tougher for up-comers to challenge the existing big players This is such an unimaginative take. Laws could easily demand easy export of _all your_ data and interoperability of chat systems.
- leesalminen 6y ago
  How do you foresee that working? Would the government publish a standard API for all chat systems? Would chat system makers have to build a bridge for every single messenger ever made, even if it only has 1k users? I just don’t see how the law can make apps interoperable without huge barriers of entry that would benefit the incumbents.
  - 3np 6y ago
    Laws shouldn’t name names but properties, such as: Fully documented and available APIs where first-party clients or front-ends can not rely on undisclosed endpoints. For a chat app, that would just mean using en existing solution like XMPP or Matrix and provide API documentation for any added deltas. The less you touch user data, the less you have to think about this.

blfr 6y ago

If public opinion and attitudes about privacy and security have really evolved significantly since Mark Zuckerberg launched the Ivy League-only TheFacebook.com, they would be moving to Signal in droves. They aren't. Most people don't care. I convince friends occasionally but the privacy argument does next to nothing. The gif search, reactions, and MMS handling are all better selling points.

x0x0 6y ago
The article is just shockingly poor. to wit > or provide any way for users to exercise their data protection rights the privacy policy, in fact, does. Per it's update date of 5 April -- before the publication of this article on 28 April -- the privacy policy says > Please log in to your account or contact us (at support@alphaexplorationco.com) if you need to change or correct your Personal Data, or if you wish to delete your account. Not to mention the persistent use of single companies and their actions used to malign every startup. See, eg, the article about clearview. (If the author weren't lazy, they probably would have realized clearview is not actually a silicon valley company: it's in ny, and the primary investors are Kirenaga partners, an east coast vc firm. So really only tenuous connections to sillicon valley)
SilverRed 6y ago
They care, just not enough to uproot their lives and drop their communication with other people on the platform. That's where Apple and governments come in and simply make tracking unviable.
- zepto 6y ago
  Apple will soon be prevented from doing that when they are forced to open the App Store.
  - saurik 6y ago
    We shouldn't be looking to Apple as our biased replacement for a government; they also, for example, pull apps that poke at how iPhones are made in sweatshops... that they occasionally move to do something someone finds valuable doesn't exonerate them or forgive how much power they have accumulated.

da_big_ghey 6y ago

is not a captioning hard for machine to make correct still? i am not too aware of how developing are in this space.

x0x0 6y ago
Yes. it's... something how this article links to folks that just assume it's easy to do, and do well. Let alone in real time.
Rebelgecko 6y ago
The various online video conferencing apps do a pretty good job at it
- jfk13 6y ago
  I suppose it depends on the speaker, but I wouldn't generally describe the examples I've seen as "a pretty good job". Seems to me there's a long way to go...
- x0x0 6y ago
  ime, not actually a great job, even with native english speakers. Let alone with accented english. And Zoom et al have a hell of a lot more resources than clubhouse, which per linkedin is currently 42 people. Microsoft didn't buy nuance for $20B because accurate speech-to-text is easy.

carlosdp 6y ago

A lot of these criticisms are trying to attribute mal-intent to what in reality is almost certainly that the founders aren't super-humans who got everything technically right out of the gate... Also > The app has since been banned in China after hosting conversations about alleged Uighur internment camps and other politically controversial subjects, which could clearly have put activists and dissidents at risk. I see this argument sometimes for apps, and I feel like it should be made more clear that it's the Chinese government putting these people at risk of harm, not the apps. Asking for security from a super-power state actor as a baseline for creating a social media app means only Facebook, Google, and Twitter get to ever make social media apps. > The data referred to is all public profile information from our app, which anyone can access via the app or our API.” Davidson was essentially defending “scraping” — the practice of extracting publicly available, non-copyrighted data from the Web. Whether technically a breach or not, the incident has breached the trust of many of its users, who did not reasonably expect their information to be used in this way. You can do the same thing with every Instagram account or Facebook or <insert basically every social media platform>. The platform is designed for people to be visible and share. You know that whatever you put in your bio can be seen by anyone on Clubhouse in a room you are in, or in search. I don't see how this can be made private without defeating the whole purpose of the product. And I also don't see how this violates privacy when no such privacy was offered. > Scraping is the same technique that controversial start-up Clearview AI, popular with law enforcement, has used to amass its facial recognition database. It's also the same method used by Google to give you search results, like what the hell are we talking about here? Also Clubhouse didn't do any scraping. That's being lost here in this weird comparison. > The audio app, only available to iPhone users, was designed and deployed with virtually no accommodations for individuals who are deaf, hard of hearing, visually impaired or who have certain other disabilities. Competitors such as Twitter Spaces, while not perfect, at least allow users to turn on captions and share transcripts, among other features, demonstrating that accessibility in audio apps is possible Yea, because Twitter is a multi-billion dollar public company with an established and experienced engineering organization with top experts in AI. Clubhouse was started a year ago and only just started reaching hyper growth in January. The contention here is you need to get this all correct out of the gate, which realistically only one of the big tech companies could actually pull off. > And while it is one thing to ask people to go without their Facebook or Google products and services, now that these platforms have become so embedded in their daily life, it is another to ask them to abstain from Clubhouse. In this moment, before users have a compelling need to be on these platforms (because everyone else is there), and before Clubhouse becomes too big to fail, we still have a choice. I'm confused, so we don't like that Facebook and Google own all of our digital interactions, but you also need to have Facebook and Google-level resources before it's ok for you to try launching a social media product? Clubhouse reportedly turned down a $4b buyout from Twitter potentially, doing exactly what people have been saying they wish happened with Instagram or WhatsApp, but still they're doing it wrong. Damned if you do, damned if you don't, I suppose.

superasn 6y ago

The only lesson learned by most founders is it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission. Be it airbnb or reddit almost all companies have employed one shady tactic or another to grow and maybe once the site is pretty popular they maybe take some steps to fix these issues on surface and hopefully people will forget about such things soon (1) (1) https://davegooden.com/2011/05/how-airbnb-became-a-billion-dollar-company/ https://davegooden.com/2011/05/how-airbnb-became-a-billion-d...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

areoform 6y ago

I have tried to provide an alternative take on ClubHouse, but it seems that people are hyper-polarized when it comes to the application. Which is strange as it has provided me with the most authentic experiences I've ever had on the internet. This is a bit shameless, but here's an excerpt from my exegesis - https://areoform.wordpress.com/2021/04/18/on-clubhouse/ https://areoform.wordpress.com/2021/04/18/on-clubhouse/, > Which brings me to the role of ClubHouse as a generator of profound experiences. Some nights ago, an ex-TLA (Three Letter Agency) officer walked into the room, sparking a conversation about strategic elicitation (brought up by me) and empathy for difficult people (brought up by him). Our conversation was interrupted by an admittedly troubled person angry about the “plandemic,” spoiling for a fight. In text, we would have ignored him – he had been banned from most social media platforms. Or, given in and argued with him, but it was clear that he was deeply upset. And so we talked. > He was a struggling musician. Who had lost his living when the pandemic hit and the symphonies shut down. The world was a harsh place for him. He was also one of the few people in the world who had mastered a very particular instrument brought into prominence by Beethoven. And so we begged him to play. To share his gift with us. He obliged by playing a beautifully complex piece of music that demonstrated his mastery over the instrument. We thanked him. Said our goodbyes, and went to sleep. > A charged situation was transmuted into the magical. Yes, it's flawed, but I'm glad that it exists. There's a unique energy in the air, when it comes to ClubHouse. There's something magical about it. I'm worried that it too will get lost to entropy and the casual cruelty of crowds. (it's harder to be cruel when people know each other)

loceng 6y ago
It may not even have been that you would have ignored him if via text, but that they may not have been as engaged or been able to read your genuine concern or attention - reading your response in whatever projected tone he believed someone/everyone would treat him. These tools can be used or wielded either as weapons or for healing-learning. I think we're just beginning to organize to understand after the clusterfuck of the experience of Facebook and the current mainstream status quo "social media." Likewise decoupling someone's reach by providing video services - whether live or recorded - and not being dependant on mainstream media to determine who's messages get out, and how long they can be, along with rehumanizing it, faces and voice being more engaging than simply test, is what we needed; where an individual like Joe Rogan acts a curator to expose interesting guests to share their story for 2-4 hours - essentially creating/expanding nodes of leadership - whether entertaining, educational, or role modelling. I think whatever experience people have on Clubhouse will fully depend on the context, the curators, and so ultimately how Clubhouse or such platforms are governed; along with how access to the information is managed, if all the most popular people start putting their content behind walled gardens then that's arguably a problem - or then we allow privacy if anyone is trying to extract too much, whatever is considered unreasonable.

Barrin92 6y ago

It's no surprise that Clubhouse values none of the things presented in the title because it's completely orthogonal to what makes Clubhouse 'valuable'. It's like saying "Elsevier is a billion dollar business despite being unfriendly to readers, researchers, and limiting access to human knowledge". No that's the reason, why in the logic of our economic system they have any price attached to them. Clubhouse's entire value proposition is artificial scarcity. It's the NFT of social networks. Take something that is abundant and cheap in the world of software (communication, space, room size) etc, and artificially bog it down to create a zero-sum game of status. It's basically 'un-innovation' for a lack of a better term. Technically there's nothing in Clubhouse that if it doesn't already exist anywhere else cannot be copied in five minutes. All the things clubhouse places limits on already are abundant, which is why their market value is, ironically enough, 0.

areoform 6y ago
Except that's not true, having experienced it, I would say that ClubHouse produces intimacy as a service. I've had magical conversations on the application that I've never had anywhere else. Saying that it's just another product and that it can be copied in 5 minutes is missing the point. The choices that they've made, their decision to eschew everything except for voice, help create a medium that is intimate, thoughtful, and kind. And otherwise busy people are addicted to it. Someone I know said that talking on ClubHouse felt like being back at Stanford. Just the electrifying conversations. The sense of possibility. There's something special here. Recently, I decided that I'd like to interview a cosmonaut who has never been interviewed by the west before. To tell his story before a broader audience. And I started a ClubHouse room to do it, and people from around the world came together to help me. Including people who knew him! I'm just a stranger, but they heard me explain why I wanted to preserve this man's legacy and that was enough. People were happy to chip in and help. That's magical. And I haven't experienced anything like that before. There's this profound sense of intimacy that this platform produces that's missing elsewhere. I keep repeating myself, but there is something here. It's a mistake to discount it.
- exogeny 6y ago
  It's hard for me to think of anything less niche than "like being at Stanford" given the extreme, tech-focused, affluent, bourgeois-as-fuck description that implies. The average person doesn't want to spend hours listening to thought leaders who are in love with their own voice pontificating randomly on topics that don't affect or address their lives in any way. To believe that they will to such an extent that A16Z is willing to give them a $4B given zero revenue, declining traction, and no clear business shows that all you need to do to gain ever-increasing valuations in the tech world is to serve up the exact kind of frou-frou, nebulous bullshit that you wrote and that VCs eat up.

comodore_ 6y ago

this piece starts very low by quoting Kevin Rose the chief censorist anti free speech activist from the nyt and continues in that vein, very underwhelming.

throw7 6y ago

Are you in da club? Alpha Exploration is born and it's where ya wanna be. It ain't where you go for delusion, it's reality. Gonna get reason, you'll find me in da club, bottle full of cause, it's got what you need, if you ain't into makin' love. So come give it a chance, if you into verity.

mwcampbell 6y ago

As a partial response to the part about accessibility, Clubhouse is now quite accessible to blind people, and a growing proportion of the online blind community is embracing it. Here's a podcast episode about Clubhouse from a blindness perspective: https://mosen.org/episode-99-all-you-need-to-know-about-clubhouse-from-a-blindness-perspective/ https://mosen.org/episode-99-all-you-need-to-know-about-club... Of course, the fact that it excludes deaf people is still a concern.

bpodgursky 6y ago
> Of course, the fact that it excludes deaf people is still a concern. I don't even understand this. What are you suggesting? That auto-captioning be mandatory for all voice applications? The technology is only barely there, and is crazy expensive to consume unless you've developed the tech in-house (ie, Google). What about Discord or just normal phones -- are those fine? If you're just saying "have text-only channels" I don't understand the point of using Clubhouse in the first place. There are a ton of great text-only messaging platforms.
- mwcampbell 6y ago
  > If you're just saying "have text-only channels" I don't understand the point of using Clubhouse in the first place. There are a ton of great text-only messaging platforms. And that's why I'm staying away from Clubhouse as long as I can. I believe that we should prefer text for important discussions, so as not to leave people out. We're still learning how to effectively have online discussions in text, but I think it's too soon to give up on it and retreat to relying on audio.
  - jazzyjackson 6y ago
    You wouldn't believe how many people you're leaving out by expecting anyone to sit in front of a screen and read and write text comments. Even if you can read and type fast, a lot of people don't care to sit on forums and squint at their screen, typing out their ideas on little iphone keyboards. The friction to hearing and expressing ideas is way lower via audio chat. It's just a different population than everyone here, content to read text and compose replies. I also don't know why you brought in "important discussions" - while I had a great 3 hour conversation last night on how to resolve disputes without authorities, I joined a room just because I saw some friends there playing "never have I ever", I didn't go seeking out an important discussion but I had one anyway, that's what gets people talking about their positive experience - the spontaneity and unexpected outcomes of it.

jonas21 6y ago

I promised myself that I'd stop wasting time getting into internet arguments. And to be honest, I don't even like Clubhouse. But this article is full of so many bad-faith arguments that I just can't. Here are a few examples: > It is clear that Clubhouse was not designed with privacy in mind. The app, which initially launched without a privacy policy, To support this claim, the author links to a Twitter thread [1] where someone first says there is no privacy policy, then someone else provides a link to it, then the first person shows a video that appears to show a broken Privacy link on the Clubhouse website -- a web site that nobody visits because Clubhouse is an app. As far as I know, the in-app link to the privacy policy and the link on the App Store have always worked -- this is one of the things that Apple consistently checks before approving an app. So somehow, having a broken link becomes they "launched without a privacy policy". You might say, well, maybe the author didn't read the Twitter thread carefully. But who was the person on Twitter who pointed out that Clubhouse does, in fact, have a Privacy Policy? It was Elizabeth Renieris -- the same Elizabeth Renieris who wrote the article! In other words, she's completely aware that her claim is untrue, yet she makes it anyway. > Instead, Clubhouse is yet another example of technology designed by, and largely for, privileged, white, Western and able-bodied men. First, this ignores the fact only one of the two founders of Clubhouse is white -- the other is a brown immigrant from a non-Western country. I doubt the author is unaware of this, and is simply reclassifying asians as "white" because it supports her narrative. Secondly, attempting to paint the founders as ablist because they don't yet support captioning is both heartbreaking and absurd. One founder has a daughter who was born with a genetic defect that causes severe disabilities, and he has put a tremendous amount of effort raising awareness and fundraising for this [2]. He's literally the last person you'd accuse of holding a prejudice against the disabled. Finally, at least in my experience, Clubhouse seems to have created a community where minorities and women are welcomed and play a prominent role in leading and moderating discussions. The claim that Clubhouse is designed largely for white men seems... completely unsupported. [1] https://twitter.com/wbm312/status/1360044616217628677 https://twitter.com/wbm312/status/1360044616217628677 [2] https://www.lydianaccelerator.org/ https://www.lydianaccelerator.org/

solipsism 6y ago
attempting to paint the founders as ablist because they don't yet support captioning is both heartbreaking and absurd. One founder has a daughter who was born with a genetic defect This isn't a good point. You can have a disabled daughter and still produce an app that excludes large groups of differently abled folks. He's literally the last person you'd accuse of holding a prejudice against the disabled. No, he's not, because that's a naive way of thinking about prejudice. Also, hilariously, you are saying he's even less likely to be prejudiced than people who themselves are disabled.

mrkramer 6y ago

Privacy is the thing that everybody talks about but nobody has it. Move on. Btw Clubhouse being worth $4bn?! New Studio 54?

gkoberger 6y ago

This article makes me wonder if we'll ever see another social network ever again. Our opinions on privacy and security have shifted dramatically (for the better, in my opinion), however imagine an author writing about Facebook a year in under a 2021 lens. Facebook (and others) grew because a lack of privacy and security was the goal. Images were public and tagged, conversations were viewable by anyone, the minifeed made it easy to see every change people made, etc. It was exclusive (college only) but also very public. The high amount of content and low amount of friction made it spread virally. Now it's much more locked down, but that's okay... it already hit a critical mass. The current consensus about privacy and security seem to be at odds with what's necessary to make a social network work. The ability to connect with anyone at any time with no friction is what makes social networks thrive, but also what enables harassment and abuse. I think it's likely we've already seen the last great social network.

halfmatthalfcat 6y ago
Social networks are not a homogenous group. You have broadcast social networks like Instagram and Twitter. You have community-based social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn and Discord. Clubhouse is just another twist on a community-esque one. Will we ever see a social network at Facebook's scale? Probably not. Will we see more social networks at the Twitter/Discord level, I bet we will.
SilverRed 6y ago
Discord is relatively new and rose up out of nothing very quickly. IMO, facebook/twitter style social networks just suck. They simply aren't a good idea. Instant messaging and VOIP is the greatest format for socializing. I'd much rather spend an hour in a voice call with a group of friends than scroll instagram.
- spideymans 6y ago
  > IMO, facebook/twitter style social networks just suck. Facebook/Twitter-style social networks were great until the point they started being "curated" (aka optimized for revenue). Once that happened, they rapidly lost their utility as a tool to actually connect people, and decayed into a medium to deliver advertisements (whether they be banner-style ads, influencers or sponsored posts).

HenryBemis 6y ago

> It also demonstrates a growing chasm between attitudes in the United States and Europe about data governance Yes, in Europe we got GDPR. In the USA you got a bunch of jokes and jokers trading your data for peanutes. The disregards towards 'anything' is BAU.. "move fast, break things". I feel that in the USA many companies are in a money-grab. "We will fix it later", and the later becomes never. Because once you created 100 problems, you only 'invest' to fix the 'top 5' and only because an auditor/CISO told you so.

transitivebs 6y ago

Here's a visualization of 2.7M Clubhouse users data and their connections: https://clubhousesocialgraph.com https://clubhousesocialgraph.com Note: this is much larger than the data leak mentioned in this and other recent articles.

newscracker 6y ago

I do seriously care about these things, but I know I’m in a tiny minority living in a bubble that most others don’t understand or don’t care much about. > A truly innovative product would learn from the mistakes of predecessor platforms and would focus on things like privacy, security and accessibility. Privacy comes at a big cost to VC funded companies that have no business plan and focus on getting billions of users to profile and profit from. Security is becoming a lost cause with each passing day. The amount of personal data leaked online dwarfs the amount of personal data not leaked online (citation needed, but this is what it appears like to lay people). Accessibility is usually an afterthought that comes into focus after a billion (or two) users are captured to firm up valuations or when the threat of lawsuits arise in jurisdictions where that’s a possibility. > This is our opportunity to demand more and to demand better. After all, if Clubhouse users do not demand these things from the outset, why should the policy makers whom we ask to regulate these technologies care? Clubhouse users aren’t going to demand any of these just like Facebook users didn’t demand better from Facebook and its companies, and in the face of more abuse by the platform didn’t leave those. The revenue and profit numbers speak to the kind of addiction that these platforms manage to create and grow. Those who care are more likely not to use Clubhouse in the first place. Yet, policy makers do need to be reminded of their duty to protect people even if said people don’t understand or don’t seem to care.

solipsism 6y ago
policy makers do need to be reminded of their duty to protect people even if said people don’t understand or don’t seem to care. What's the argument for the government to care so much about privacy, if people don't? I get why we have banking protection laws. It would be extreme chaos if people's money could just disappear. But in what way is poor security and privacy practices more than a nuisance? I think people like us weigh this problem too heavily, because 1) we want to use apps and technology like these, 2) we really care a lot about doing it securely. But the public just doesn't care as much as us. Why should there be laws and policy just to suit our purposes?

stefan_ 6y ago

Maybe if you stop talking about it it will all just go away? https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=clubhouse https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=clubhouse

MattGaiser 6y ago

> A truly innovative product would learn from the mistakes of predecessor platforms and would focus on things like privacy, security and accessibility. These have been repeatedly demonstrated not to matter to large enough swaths of the population. That makes them irrelevant to growth unless you are targeting one of those particular niches.

slibhb 6y ago

There's an ongoing debate over whether people should be allowed to speak freely on the internet without "content moderation". Clubhouse is on one side of that debate, this author is on the other. Behind vague accusations of "not valuing privacy," that's what this article is actually about. > Rohan and Davison, who met at Stanford and have an estimated nine failed apps between them This feels nasty. More boring culture war stuff: > Clubhouse is yet another example of technology designed by, and largely for, privileged, white, Western and able-bodied men > In 2020, only 2.3 percent of all venture funding went to female founders (down from 2.8 percent in 2019, as women were hit harder by the pandemic)

baryphonic 6y ago
> Clubhouse is yet another example of technology designed by, and largely for, privileged, white, Western and able-bodied men Having used the app, I can say this one also seems particularly nasty because it's untrue. There is a lot of diversity on Clubhouse. And even a lot of wokeness. And even a lot of anti-wokeness. It all depends on where you look.

mybrid 6y ago

It's all about the Benjamins. VC's don't care about society at large, just the money they can make.

ummonk 6y ago

The scraping incidents with Clubhouse aren't really comparable with those of Facebook. All the Clubhouse profiles are public and searchable to everyone from within the app, so it's not really a big difference to privacy if they get scrape and people can search and look them up on a 3rd party website. By contrast, many profiles on Facebook are unlisted / private, and it's a major issue that the profile information was searchable by default via phone number, allowing for the mass scraping of non-public profiles.

blacktriangle 6y ago

While it's fun and easy to pick on Clubhouse lately, this is true of every new software business. A company can value privacy, security, and accessibility, but it still makes sense to value finding a viable sustainable business model more, particularly with the clock ticking as you burn through your funding. Privacy, security, and accessibility are difficult and expensive, and most often come at the cost of slowing down iteration on new functionality at the time when fast iteration is the most important. And no amount of money will buy you speed if every new feature needs to go through a whole accessibility review. If privacy, security, and accessibility advocates want to be taken seriously they need to stop bitching every chance they can and start offering solutions to developers to make it brain-dead simple to respect all 3 aspects while not slowing down the pace of development. Instead accessibility advocates seem to be more interested in criticizing every attempt at automating accessibility while acting incredulous when early stage startups aren't willing to pay them $300/hr to consult on UIs that may not even make it into production.