The Clubhouse is the new trend in India, and since its launch, it has stolen the hearts of many people due to the features it has and the benefits of being on this platform.
If you wonder what Clubhouse is, it is an online social platform where voice-only discussions are made and this is an invitation-based online virtual platform that means if you don’t get an invite from the person who is using Clubhouse, you wouldn’t be able to join it.
Clubhouse and Our Privacy
To put it straight, using platforms like clubhouse would let you risk your data as it is mentioned in their guidelines that they will be accessing all the contact information and social media platforms information and also can share that particular information without even informing the users.
There is the same kind of virtual chat room back in 2011, I used it for making some new friends and it is available on PC and Android devices too. The app name is Galaxy – Chat & Play and it is identical to this Clubhouse that only difference is in Galaxy you have no feature of voice chat, but can only visit a planet (which is an online virtual room) chat with whomever you want and then get out from there.
Platforms like these are used for fun, knowledge sharing, and connections. Most of the time users will end up uninstalling these apps due to the things which happen on these virtual platforms.
Let us look into the boons and banes of using Clubhouse and to what extent it is adding value to our life when we are spending hours and hours switching rooms and searching for content which we can stay and listen to or talk about.
Boons of Clubhouse
1. Networking
Networking is done in any platform and applications like Clubhouse, it becomes a major utility. Entrepreneurs, startups, micro firms, social media influencers, bloggers and writers, and all other sorts of talents are eager to participate in the Clubhouse discussions with one aim of networking and gaining more and more attention and spreading their brand and shouting out their existence. In the case of networking, Clubhouse is the new face in the market.
2. Real People – Real Stories
Clubhouse involves real people around the world who will share their stories with the listeners, they share their own experiences through which one can learn something new. Not all the time is going to help us because we are all unique and the thought process is quite different from others. Some others solutions are not going to solve our problems due to the variation in the situations. So, it is good to listen to the others speaking, in this way Clubhouse provides a good hallway to dive in and listen, make sure not to get addicted to this process too.
3. Communication Skills
One of the best traits of successful persons is communication, we are not all that good when it comes to communicating with each other, we struggle to keep the words together while discussing with our friends or family when it is something like a formal meet-up. The clubhouse provides access to the thousands of rooms out there where sometimes you might run into a great room with a huge opportunity to share your thoughts too. In this way, the communication skills and talking skills might increase due to the participation.
Banes of Clubhouse
1. Your privacy at risk
If you are concerned about not revealing your identity to people or strangers, then this is not the right platform to stick around. The clubhouse has access to our social media accounts (if connected) and also to our contacts list and they can identify the non-clubhouse user based on this data collection. In this way, your data might leak online anytime without your consent.
2. Users without ethics
Recently when I came to know about my brother’s experience with the Clubhouse room, he was targeted, isolated, and abused due to his religion and race. Discrimination is found in this platform and this may ruin mental peace and cause serious trouble and also results in lowering your self-esteem.
He is a reputed photographer and a member of almost 2000 virtual rooms, but he has to face this incident and trouble when he is in a new room and all the seven members just tortured him with their abusive words.
They don’t have minimum etiquette of using the platform and people like them are seen almost on any networking sites. Even after the report to the Clubhouse team, they may or may not take strict actions against the abusers, but the feelings of my brother just got hurt, his only intention was to build new connections and have a healthy relationship with like-minded people.
3. Addiction
Anything if done too much is an addiction, I have seen many people who got addicted to Facebook and the technology has got wider wings and improvised time to time, now we see other social media platforms taking over the internet with their applications everywhere and people are using it in two ways. The first category are addicted and also they are using the platform for their marketing purposes and creating their funnel list of the customers. On the other hand, some people are spending hours and hours just like that and wasting their valuable time by just gaining nothing.
Social media addiction is a wider concept with many disadvantages and everything is applied the same for the Clubhouse. Since it is a trend that is circling the internet.
Conclusion
Clubhouse if used wisely, can be a good addition to the knowledge gaining hub, but we cannot rely on it completely and independently for getting customers or gaining some business ideas.
We may end up in confusion by following all the tips mentioned by the entrepreneurs out there and also not everything is going to work out in our lives.
Clubhouse guidelines state that they will record the session only if someone reports anyone, otherwise all the talks will be deleted right after the session, and recording them by the users is considered a violation of the terms and conditions of Clubhouse. Egypt called Clubhouse the place for terrorists and China and Jordan have already banned the application as the guidelines were not so specific which will protect the user data.
My dear brother is a male guy, who is all tough mentally and physically, but when he shared about this incident I can sense the pain in his heart and this must be stopped.
We cannot change the people who are misbehaving and we cannot even fight with every individual who is doing such things, there are girls in Clubhouse too and I am pretty sure that one of them is right now facing abuse or body shame in those rooms. Not everyone is going to open their mouth, hence it is better to watch our steps before stepping into the room of strangers, those words have a huge impact on your subconscious mind and they are not any lesser than the physical wounds.
I urge the team Clubhouse to come up with new privacy policies and where each individual is treated with equity and equality without any discrimination.
The application has a million downloads now and they have to modify their terms and conditions to gain more respect from the users, otherwise, all the countries will follow the same thing like that of Egypt and China.
