Clubhouse : Why I Love It, and Why It Might Break My Heart

I wrote a blog a few days ago about my first few days on Clubhouse, which heavily emphasized some concerns with both immediate platform governance changes and the long term plan for content moderation. I thought I would leave it up as I published this piece, but decided to go with one definitive piece of writing on the platform out of respect for the platform itself and founders so as to not give permanence to any initial impressions of mine that may have changed.

The Clubhouse platform and app itself are basically a conduit for audio chat, but characterizing it as just another Teamspeak or Ventrilo isn’t accurate. It’s more a platform that allows for ephemeral podcasting : People join a room, there are speakers and there are audience members, and after everyone leaves the room disappears into the ether. It delivers the podcast / content consumption experience, but without the huge overhead of production such as editing and finding a platform to publish to. One of the biggest advantages is that Clubhouse fosters spontaneity, many rooms remain untitled with any topic and conversations can veer wildly into different directions. The problem with scheduling people (for the most part) is one of the biggest advantages the platform currently has.

It’s been interesting to see how the lack of text chat has brought some basic communication norms into existence. Twitter is used as the de-facto method of text communication, but people also can ‘ping’ others to join them in a room with a text message. Some less obvious norms has evolved, such as users changing their profile pictures to share a picture or use a picture with text to ask a question. One thing I’ve been struck by is that it is very rare, even in rooms with many speakers to be talked over by others which speaks to an amazing level of fundamental respect users have for each other, to paraphrase what Sarah Jeong wrote about the Mastodon social network: people on Clubhouse are incredibly nice. Or as someone on platform said:

Clubhouse isn’t social media, it’s social.

The platform’s long term intentions are to allow public signups, but currently it sits somewhere between private and public : You can apply to be let in the beta, but users are curated and you just might run into a celebrity or two. The population heavily skews towards Silicon Valley, in terms of founders, investors, and entrepreneurs. It does have a diverse overall population of interests however, with populations such as people in media, in the entertainment industry, in the regulated substance industry (cannabis and psychedelics), and more. With this currently being the case, it’s unavoidable to view one of the main benefits of the platform as the social graph that exists currently.

We also have to acknowledge that a worldwide pandemic has contributed to the popularity and population of Clubhouse. I refer to it as a canvas for the great reset because the nature of voice eliminates a lot of stratifications, leaving only things like those who are good at speaking and those who need a bit more work. The isolation of the pandemic has made people desperate for human contact, which is why founders and celebrities have found their way to this blank canvas.

I’ve been on the internet for a long time, and I’ve watched community technology evolve from IRC to forums to social media in various incarnations. Through that, there have been instances of having the ‘magic’ feeling, that you’re part of something special. That has less to do with the technology and more with the community, but the technology is certainly the conduit for creating that community. Clubhouse is truly transformative : It re-imagines the basic form of communication as voice instead of text, and heavily limits text-based communication on the platform. This is so incredibly powerful, and has made some powerful impacts on me. I view others on Clubhouse as people, not users.

A few conversations have made me change my mind on something, but just about every conversation has changed how I feel about something. The emotional connections and nuances of voice make empathy possible, perhaps even likely, and this is a game-changer for human communication in a time of isolation.

In a discussion on proposed governance changes I hosted a few days ago, an amazingly diverse set of perspectives and viewpoints were discussed. And it was an actual discussion, not people yelling politics via text at each other. I got the impression that even with those I fundamentally disagreed with there was some level of understanding, and I think that gives way to the fact that voice is a more natural method of communications for humans : We can hear intonations and other elements to the way a person speaks, and by that some of the context that is lost on text-based services like Twitter is restored.

If Twitter makes you feel bad after using it, Clubhouse leaves you with an afterglow, which is why I’ve come to care about the platform so deeply.

There are some unanswered questions with the platform in its current state, lending from the fact that it is such a transformative experience. Simple questions of what blocking someone looks like are unanswered, and some recent controversies have likely accelerated some of these governance decisions. Having to make these decisions is unavoidable, but I strongly believe they do not need to be, and should not be rushed. Which is why reading the phrase ‘Trust and Safety’ in the latest app update struck a nerve with me, and gave me flashbacks of how Twitter slowly became a place that made me more sad then happy.

It’s best to not beat around the bush : The ‘Trust and Safety’ model began when a cultural controversy prompted Twitter to create the ‘Trust and Safety Council’, a group of people and organizations that were consulted to shape the future of governance on the platform. Without relitigating how that unfolded, it marked the shift towards top down moderation, where power was taken away from users and put in the hands of the platform, and the overall shift towards platforms being black boxes making product decisions. To be clear, abuse and harassment on platforms is not an easy problem to solve, it might just be unsolveable.

I fear that I’m seeing the beginnings of what has happened with other platforms : The potential for transformative experiences and connections being dashed in favour of a high-profile platform becoming a political football.

I firmly believe that given the basic currency of Clubhouse is voice, and not text, copy and pasting governance from text-based platforms is the wrong choice and has the potential to seriously damage the platform.

The proposal that set me off was that every room should be recorded, and those recordings will persist for 1 hour in case someone reports an incident. To be clear on this topic, my inclination towards less moderation absolutely does not outweigh someone being safe on the platform, but this is incredibly heavy handed as a first step. There are obvious security implications of these recordings being breached, but also that a rogue Trust and Safety member might disregard company policy on moderation. This has already happened on Twitter, and the temptation to do so with high profile members of Clubhouse is sizeable.

The culture impact is the bigger concern however, and something that really worries me. The founder were clear about a main driving factor being giving room creators the power to control how discussion unfolds, and not allowing users the choice runs contrary to that dictum.

Not giving the choice of this functionality to the users also very much plays into the Trust and Safety model of the platform knowing best, and this model risks destroying the openness of discussion on the platform. Making recording conversations the default has the potential to make the experience of friends gathering at a house party impossible, with everyone knowing they are being recorded.

Also, it also plays into our current surveillance society climate, with several people in that discussion voicing their fears about being always recorded, and how it does the opposite of making them feel safer.

I would much prefer Clubhouse recording rooms for moderation purposes is not the default, and there is instead an ‘On The Record ‘ option for a room. At the very least, users should be given this choice rather than the platform always recording conversations.

On the Trust and Safety model in general, I implore the founders to not regard that model as a best practice, because it hasn’t worked. I don’t think any demographic on Twitter feels particularly good after using the platform or safe.

Even worse though, is Trust and Safety becoming de-facto cultural arbiters. There are people on Twitter you can’t mention by name, or tag, without a big chance of some kind of moderation action befalling your account. Part of being ‘good at Twitter’ is being able to discern who these people are and avoid interacting. The more heavy-handed content moderation is, the easier it is to gamify.

So, all this being said, I still really love Clubhouse. Even if my worst fears come to pass, I will probably continue to use and love the platform. That decision will likely then be based on the people I encounter more than the platform itself. And that would break my heart just a little.

Clubhouse certainly falls into the ‘disruption’ paradigm of Silicon Valley, in many positive ways. It fundamentally changes the way people interact, and allows for more human connection and less robotic communication. I propose then that the platform should also disrupt the approach to content governance, rather than continue with the worrying trend of users not being in control of their own destinies.