What is between supporters and opponents .. What should I know as an Arab user about the Clubhouse app?

At the moment, many questions arise about the new Clubhouse app, so if you've been spending a lot of time on social media lately, you likely have many questions about the fuss this app is causing, not just the traditional questions about the app and how Its use, but questions related to the Arab user who certainly has concerns and other questions that foreign websites cannot answer.

What is the importance of Club House for the Arab user?

The courses held by universities before the advent of online education were limited to personal attendance, as prestigious foreign universities did not dream of attending to them and pursuing studies or attending training courses except after paying a large sum and entering into complex procedures.

The same was the case when attending international conferences, whether scientific or even interviews and programs, so participation required personal attendance.

This is what the Clubhouse app has overcome, so now, with the spread of this trend, there will be many conferences hosting major thinkers, scholars, politicians and celebrities, and Arab users can enter these rooms and participate in the dialogues that take place there.

Famous conferences such as TED, political and entertainment talk shows, and even university forums will have a place in this new social space, and these parties and others will be keen to attract many audiences outside of the groups known to them.

What Arab entities can benefit from this application?

At some point in the nineties of the last century, morning radio programs in the Arab world revolved around citizen complaints, and the program was then contacting officials about a specific complaint to hear the opinion of the official.

Clubhouse application now can better replace these radio programs, by means of the application users can talk directly with the official and discuss him of course through the chat room administrator and not randomly.

The government sectors working to provide services can run a seminar about any new service or hear users ’opinions and suggestions about the services provided easily through the application.

Private companies can also carry out marketing campaigns by offering their services in rooms that attract the audience interested in these services.

Universities can hold seminars and meetings between students, professors, and even the administration. They can also attract many users by providing seminars via the application for students from outside the university itself.

Candidates for the elections in Arab countries and even social influencers can use the Clubhouse to reach the categories they want to reach without the need to attend in person, and at a small cost.

Club House app can better replace the radio programs that talk about citizens' problems (Shutterstock)

Is the use of Clubhouse technically safe for the Arab user?

According to security experts, Clubhouse suffered a security breach, which saw one anonymous user broadcast multiple rooms to a third-party website.

The app reacted quickly, banning the user permanently, indicating that it had installed new "safeguards" to prevent this from happening again.

The app is still in its infancy and it cannot be guaranteed that there will be no vulnerabilities of this nature.

While the company manages most of the user experience and front-end activity, the app uses external resources to manage its back-end systems, such as traffic and voice production, that Agora does.

The security breach was discovered by Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), which stated that at this point Clubhouse users should in no way assume that their conversations are private.

"Club House cannot make any promises of privacy to conversations that take place anywhere around the world," said Alex Stamos, director of the Stanford Observatory and former head of security at Facebook.

The Stanford Observatory researchers note that given Agora's ties to China, the company "will likely have access to users' raw voice, which could provide access to the Chinese government."

Is the use of Clubhouse safe from a security point of view for Arab users in some countries?

In the beginning of the last decade, many Arab countries witnessed popular revolutions, which social media played a major role in igniting, and after that they witnessed counter-revolutions in which the media itself also had a role, whether in terms of monitoring activists' content or electronic flies spreading and using these means to control revolutions .

As for Club House, it differs from these tools only in one respect, which is that discussions and voice interactions are not saved in the application and cannot be searched "technically", and they are canceled within a short period, just like what happens with Snapchat videos, however it does not mean This is because certain parties can record voice in chat rooms using traditional equipment.

The app does not keep audio recordings of users (Reuters)

Is the Clubhouse app socially acceptable in the Arab countries?

What about women and children?

The real ethical dilemma is that these applications do not take into account the natural differences between societies or the extent of the harm they cause to entire societies.

It deals with all societies in the same way, from Norway and Sweden, through Brazil and South Africa, to Iraq and Saudi Arabia, where all societies are treated equally.

Applications cannot distinguish between the specific needs of each community and the concerns and risks to which it is exposed.

Because of the power of discussions to make noise, the intensity that their discussions can generate can harm society as a whole with no organizational or ethical restrictions in place.

Parties can open discussions that fuel racist, tribal, and sectarian accusations, or conversations that question people's beliefs and religions, or the immoral stories that may be told in these rooms that offend people's principles.

Worse, the app allows those under the age of 18 to register and participate regardless of the nature and sensitivity of the topics being discussed.

One can imagine the consequences, given that this app is a safe place and a fertile climate for all forms of prohibited and dangerous substances, it is not only open to adults but also to children and teenagers.

Is the application free and can be downloaded for any Arab user?

The application is free, but it can only be downloaded by invitation, and it is now restricted to iPhone users, so owners of other Android phones cannot use it.

Paul Davidson, CEO of Club House, stated that they are working on developing a version that works on Android phones, and there is information indicating that they have brought in Android developers to work on releasing the version as soon as possible.