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'Clubhouse' Lets the World Speak. Is the Intention Innocent?

 Clubhouse is a rapidly growing social media platform that emerged during the time of Covid-19 pandemic. And people as they hear of it are in a hurry to be part of it, lest they be left behind. It is interesting to note that the app is not available to people with older phones and older versions of operating software. That already indicates control of access: is there an agenda to exclude a great majority who the information world considers as incompetent. Or is there a monitory agenda of force upgrading of phones and software?

Is it a veiled data and opinion collection tool by the mighty and the powerful of the world? In the age of big data, and big data analysis, Clubhouse can turn out to be an effective worldwide data collection tool.

Most of the popular social media platforms thrive on text, images, and videos. Audio has been only an accompanying or background feature of most of them. Clubhouse’s only feature is audio. And it looks as though people were waiting to talk, may be a result of the pandemic social distancing? In Clubhouse, a person can start a club: a room to discuss topics of one’s interest, or just drop in as a listener or speaker during a conversation. Clubhouse is different from other social networks. A common user can interact with their heroes and influencers who they’ve only seen on YouTube, news, or tweets.

why does clubhouse allowing people to talk?
Clubhouse audio only app

There are concerns of privacy violations and surveillance. What is spoken is temporally recorded, without the consent of the user, and deleted later. It lacks end-to-end encryption. That could lead to uncontrolled government surveillance. So the data can be accessed by anyone. Its users are susceptible to data breaches and privacy violations.

Clubhouse also accesses users’ contacts, which too is a privacy concern. It gives the app information about people who might never even join the app. There is no mechanism to control who can follow whom, that affects privacy and contributes to harassment culture. It creates ‘hyper awareness’ of others' lives, whereabouts, and words; also visa versa. People become vulnerable to 'hyper awareness' phenomenon. 

The Stanford Internet observatory observes that the backend infrastructure of Clubhouse is supplied by a Chinese start-up called Agora. Is it a veiled data and opinion collection tool by the mighty and the powerful of the world? In the age of big data, and big data analysis, Clubhouse can turn out to be an effective worldwide data collection tool. 

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