What If Dictators and Autocrats Learn to Love Clubhouse, Too?

In Silicon Valley, what passes for innovation often means copying the hot new thing, and right now that new thing is Clubhouse: an app that provides audio chat rooms for people to discuss whatever they want. Facebook, Twitter, and other major social networks are all racing to introduce their own audio chat products as fast as they can cobble them together. Their moment may have already come and gone: According to recent reports, downloads of the Clubhouse app have dropped precipitously over the past month. But Clubhouse is surging in popularity in the Middle East—with more than a million downloads this year—where it’s being hailed as an important new space for discussing politics, sex, abortion, alcohol, and other verboten subjects. Clubhouse users are “practicing democracy in real time,” Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a former Iranian vice president, recently told The New York Times. The Times’ story struck a somewhat hopeful tone, presenting Clubhouse as a refreshing agora of free speech in “repressive countries,” while burying the reasons for concern. “Privacy advocates have also raised issues about the personal data that Clubhouse collects, which could be even riskier if authoritarian governments can gain access to it,” the piece notes halfway through. Any…
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