Voice SNS 'Clubhouse' is struggling to crack down on issues such as pornography and harassment



The voice SNS '

Clubhouse ' launched in April 2020 received a lot of attention as the pandemic of the new coronavirus made it difficult for people to interact with each other. However, the news website under the media conglomerate Network18 Group in India complained that 'Clubhouse is exchanging pornography and harassing users, and the moderation of content by management is insufficient'. Moneycontrol reports.

Porn, Bullying and Body-part Auctions: Inside Clubhouse India's Content Moderation Struggles
https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/porn-bullying-and-body-part-auctions-inside-clubhouse-indias-content-moderation-struggles-7790081.html

On the evening of November 28, 2021, it was discovered that a group of men was holding a 'female auction' in a room where Hindi users from Clubhouse gathered. According to a voice recording posted on Twitter , one person named a particular woman and said, 'I pay 5 rupees (about 7.5 yen) for (female name),' another man said, ' She said that she was having a conversation to price the appearance of a woman, such as saying, 'It's worth 1 paisa (100 rupees: 150 yen).'

'I feel polluted and disgusted. No woman likes to have a part of her body auctioned by trolls,' said Swaty Kumar, who was the subject of this auction. , To Moneycontrol. The room, 'Singlepur,' was already deleted after the audio recording was posted on Twitter, but Kumar claims he hasn't been told about the case by the Clubhouse operator.



Clubhouse appeared in 2020 when pandemic city blockades and movement restrictions were introduced in each country, and as an invitation-only SNS that only people invited by existing users can participate, mainly Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and artists Has acquired users. In January 2021, Tesla

CEO Elon Musk appeared on a show in Clubhouse and became a hot topic, with many users all asking for invitations.

A person named Rahul who interviewed Moneycontrol also made his Clubhouse debut in February 2021, but at the beginning it was an SNS where many celebrities gathered, so he felt that his existence was out of place. However, as Clubhouse abolished the invitation system in May 2021 and open to the general public, conversations were shifted to more mundane, so Rahul made friends in Clubhouse for hours. It came to be soaked in.

Around August, Rahul created an '18-ban club' in Clubhouse with friends who said, 'I want a room where I can talk more vulgarly.' Within the Clubhouse, users with specific interests can gather to create a 'club' and participate in events and shows held within the club. At that time, it seems that there were few 18-ban rooms in the Clubhouse where you could talk dirty, and the room opened at Rahul's club sometimes attracted more than 1000 users. “We were able to speak all day from 2pm to 3am and 4am,” says Rahul.

Initially, the rooms created by the 18-ban club were not always vulgar topics, and there were also rooms where many medical students accepted questions about sex education such as sex and masturbation. However, as the 18-ban club became more popular, it began to collect many complaints. 'I don't know if we've done anything wrong. Community guidelines don't say don't create a room like this. We don't force anyone to talk,' Rahul said. ... it's all an agreement. ' Rahul has already left the club, but at the time of writing the article, more than 40,000 users are still in the club.



When Moneycontrol reporters actually sneaked into Clubhouse's 18-ban club, some clubs had rooms for exchanging nude photos, guiding them to private sex video chats, and offering 'live audio porn'. It was made. In one room, 'If you want a nude photo, join the club and send us your phone number,' he called out to the listener, and the man who ran by the end of the countdown was used as a speaker to actually share the nude photo. It seems that the method of making them testify was done.

There is also a room called 'Cash or Exchange' for young people to exchange WhatsApp numbers. In this room, the host will have one male or female speaker to nominate the 'who you want to exchange WhatsApp numbers' in the room, and that person will also be the speaker for discussion. As a result of discussions between the two, if they agree with each other, they will 'exchange' WhatsApp numbers, and if they do not reach an agreement, they will give 'cash' to the person who nominated them as a thank-you for the conversation.

'We don't want sexuality, it's just for fun and meeting people,' said Karthiga, a 19-year-old female student at Cash or Exchange. However, there are also cases where men who could not exchange numbers as expected sometimes rant or harass women. 'Yes, I faced harassment when some men used vulgar language to insult me, but so far I haven't escalated to a more serious problem,' Karthiga said. As he said, Karthiga admitted that some women were harassed enough to have to file a complaint.

Since Clubhouse is basically required to register with your real name, harassment may spread not only to Clubhouse but also to other SNS. A sexual minority man attended a room about LGBTQ + and expressed his opinion, and he said he was harassed by multiple social networks. Also, a college student who participated in the discussion at Clubhouse received a harassment message after getting personal information and WhatsApp numbers via the college website.

Technology-savvy lawyer Raj Pagariya said that while Clubhouse operations receive only 4% of complaints from platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, the real problem is that harassment goes beyond Clubhouse to another platform. It is pointed out that it will spread to. “Finding your online identity is not difficult. We use so many social networks that people can be good cyberstalkers,” says Pagariya.



Also, even if you try to report harassment in Clubhouse to the police, there is a problem that evidence is hard to remain because it is a voice-based SNS. On Twitter and Facebook, text, images, videos, etc. left online are evidence, but in Clubhouse, verbal abuse and harassment are the main, so if you have not tried to record in advance, definitive evidence Is difficult to grab. In addition, Indian police do not have knowledge of voice-based SNS and often refuse to submit reports on harassment at Clubhouse.

When Moneycontrol sent a detailed email to Clubhouse asking about harassment and moderation in an 18-ban room, a spokeswoman said, 'Much of the information you get is inaccurate. It's a problem. Room actors are being addressed and we haven't seen an increase in problem reports. '' Clubhouse has no place to bully, hate speech, or abuse. Hundreds of thousands of rooms every day. Has been created and many of them do not happen. If a violation of community guidelines is reported and confirmed, prompt action will be taken. '' We are expanding our team of experts on moderation, Response times have improved dramatically in the last few months. ' However, it seems that there was no response to some of the individual cases mentioned by Moneycontrol.

Clubhouse's community guidelines state that the platform is for users over the age of 18, but it doesn't really check the identity of the individual, so it's actually attended by a large number of users under the age of 18. It has been

pointed out . Even in the 'cash or exchange' room where Mr. Karthiga participated, it seems that there were several cases where users under the age of 18 were found and evacuated, and some cases were not evacuated. It is expected that there was also.



One of the reasons Clubhouse's moderation isn't working is that the original Clubhouse was reluctant to moderate content and began to seriously consider moderation as it grew in size. Can be mentioned.

Clubhouse co-founder and CEO Paul Davison told the media, 'Live group audio doesn't know in advance what people are trying to say or what the content will look like, so other things. It's really different from the media. '' There is no silver bullet to address this issue. Nuances also make audio special, but this can also make coercion (on the platform side) difficult, 'said voice-based. He talked about the difficulty of moderation in SNS.

At the time of writing the article, Clubhouse is facing a slowdown in growth due to the fact that daily life is recovering from a pandemic and Twitter, Facebook, etc. have begun to develop voice services. It has been pointed out that issues such as increased adult content and harassment can damage Clubhouse's brand image and make it more difficult to monetize.

in Mobile,   Web Service, Posted by log1h_ik