Clubhouse, the new audio-based social media app where users enter rooms to talk about anything they could possibly want, is gaining lots of attention. Part of its popularity comes from it being pegged as the next social media giant. Beyond the hype, its epic product privacy failures warrant scrutiny.
While social media platforms are notorious for their privacy failures, Clubhouse committed its own set at a time when consumer privacy sentiment is increasingly in favor of privacy. What’s more, big tech brands like Apple have been publicly championing privacy, recognizing that privacy has value beyond compliance. Research also shows that there is a clear marketplace demand for privacy. Clubhouse could’ve been the privacy-focused audio-based social media app. It could still be, if it takes a hard look at its privacy infringements and course corrects. Will they?
Clubhouse was founded by Paul Davison and Rohan Seth last year. In a bidding war that culminated in a ten million-dollar ($10,000,000) Series A in May 2020, Andressen Horowitz won the Clubhouse founders by getting celebrity Kevin Hart onto the app when it only had around five thousand users.
Throughout the pandemic months, Clubhouse rose in popularity. In rolling out the app, Clubhouse leveraged FOMO: users get into Clubhouse by invitation-only, and existing users get a limited number of invites. Clubhouse is reported to have millions of users today, some citing over 10 million. Clubhouse raised a one hundred million-dollar ($100,000,000) Series B round in January 2021 at a 1 billion dollar valuation, despite not having any revenue.
Clubhouse rolled out its app to a global user base without much regard for privacy. Some of the privacy concerns are as follows:
Clubhouse collects not just its users’ personal information, but also their contacts’ — even those who are not Clubhouse users. During sign-up, Clubhouse requests access to a user’s phone contacts. It collects people’s personal information even before they engage with the app. This design is problematic because a user cannot consent on behalf of others to Clubhouse’s collection and use of their personal information. Moreover, this begs the question of whether Clubhouse is creating shadow profiles of non-users.