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Pritish Nandy: Not at all. It will be counter-productive. Anything censored goes underground as we have all seen over the years: alcohol, drugs, gutka, pornography. The only thing that works is clearly outlined reasonable regulations. The only thing that can be reasonably censored is that which compromises national security. Nothing else. OTT is not free to air television. It is a paid service. People make a conscious decision while paying their subscriptions. If they dont like what they get, they should cancel their subscription and get off the platform. They cannot force the platform to change their content. Would you ask Hindustan Unilever to change the ingredients of their toothpaste if it offended you? Or would you simply change your toothpaste brand? Content is an FMCG product today. Respect it and treat it as one.

Pratik Gandhi: I don't think it's needed. We need censors in cars to avoid accidents. Not in the field of arts.

Apurva Asrani: I am against government controlled censorship. In a democracy one has every right to express oneself. Having said that, we live in a society where people of diverse cultural & economic backgrounds exist. It would be prudent to exercise some sort of self censorship in order to be sensitive to this diversity.

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Should there be censorship on digital platform? Major OTT players respond - National Herald

Hello via @Joinclubhouse

San Francisco-basedClubhouse, an emerging audio social network,raised$100 million led by Andreessen Horowitz at a $1 billion post-money valuation. Silicon Valleys latest unicorn, just under a year old, has digirati, influencers, industry experts and those seeking an coveted invitation to join the exclusive clubabuzz.

Founded by Silicon Valley friends Paul Davison and Rohan Seth in March 2020, Clubhouse set out to connect people in meaningful conversations via a drop-in audio platform. In June 2020, my friend Ben Parr suggested I give Clubhouse a try. Then, in extremely limited, private beta, I thought it would be next to impossible to make time for yet another social platform.

As a former member of private clubs such as Soho House and the Battery, I was wary of joining another exclusive club. Even in its early stages, the promise was clear.At the time, the finite set of users hosted audio rooms where conversations focused on startup and tech innovation, COVID-19, and Black Lives Matter (BLM).

Within weeks, I followed conversations led by an incredible array of successful entrepreneurs sharing their stories and advice such as Alexis Ohanian, Ev Williams, Scooter Braun, and Ashton Kutcher. I also followed along in conversations led by celebrities such as Wiz Khalifa,Ava DuVernay, Tiffany Haddish, and Kevin Hart,that werent about celebrity at all. This didnt feel hierarchical. It felt like a community. And none of it was a waste of time. From the get-go, I was immersed in conversations that were deep, philosophical, and raw.

I couldnt stop listening. Ask anyone who uses Clubhouse, and Ill bet they say the same thing.

Unlike other social networks, I found myself sharing less and listening more, joining room after room across a variety of topics. I also actively participated in rooms dedicated to meta conversations about Clubhouse itself, how the platform could improve, and ways to grow while keeping conversations and engagement intimate. Co-Founder Paul Davidson often participates in these discussions to listen, learn, and share his ideas. I admire that in Paul.

Clubhouse Home Screen

Does the World Need Another Social Network?

If you could plug into a live conversation about a topic, youre passionate about, on demand, anywhere in the world, and have an opportunity to not only listen to some of the smartest people on the subject, but also participate with them, would you?

Thats the premise (and promise) of Clubhouse.

Its reminiscent of the early days of Twitter. In 2006 or 2007, I said that news no longer breaks, it Tweets. It was exciting, and unprecedented, to be part of a human seismograph that represented the real-time trends, conversations, randomness, and events around the world. Twitter quickly became a real-time, virtual water cooler, a digital wild west of sorts, where the value of the platform was created by creators,curators, and consumers. Its where the#hashtagwas created! And, those conversations spilled over into the real world, igniting Tweet-ups, Twitter-focused conferences, movements, and revolutions.

Clubhouse feels like the early days of Twitter right now. Eventually, it will grow more than the current two million active users it houses now. Live video, podcasts, and conferences will feature Clubhouse panels or broadcast to the platform, and serious FOMO will attract people to participate online in ways that feel more productive and gratifying than in other networks.

Clubhouse is a Live Conversation, and Everyone Can Participate Their Way

At a time when live events are postponed, cancelled, or virtualized due to the global pandemic, Clubhouse came along and did what other networks or virtual events couldnt, unite a group of enthusiastic, informed, curious, and open-minded people to talk about and collaborate around industry and societal trends.

Jeremiah Owyang, a well-known and highly regarded tech analyst, long-time friend and neighbor, and also my original guide on Clubhouse, noted that Clubhouse launched at the right time.

Clubhouse Chat app is the perfect quarantine app, he observed. People, isolated and lonely, seek to connect, at a human level. With conferences, bars, and vacations cancelled, people can have meaningful conversations that enable more empathy than text-based social networks, yet don't run the risk of video fatigue. The dead simple features make it easy for users to onboard, and also multi-task, clean the house, or make dinner.

At a time when working from home has everyone coping with video fatigue anddigital burnout, Clubhouse introduced a new experience that, like Twitter, captured its modern zeitgeist among early adopters.

Principal investor at early-stage fund SignalFire, former TechCrunch Editor-At-Large, and good friendJosh Constinedescribed its rabid appeal this way, Clubhouse was born out of the Quarantine User Loan that helped it build its initial critical mass of concurrent listeners while everyone was stuck at home. But its snowballed big enough to survive paying that loan back post-COVID.

The Quarantine Concurrent User Loan for Synchronous Apps

Indeed, Clubhouse was a boon when it launched at the beginning of shelter-in-place orders and, for better or worse, Clubhouse is still benefitting from COVIDs unwanted staying power.

Clubhouse Recreates the Magic of Your Favorite Conferences, on the Small Screen

When you find the right people in the right room, Clubhouse is as whimsical as it is invigorating. It can be refreshingly productive when other networks feel draining. It can be inspiring. Its also rather nostalgic, in the best possible way. If you dont like a room, you can quietly piece out.

For those who were on the front lines in the rise of social media, youll likely remember the excitement, the hope, and the eagerness to learn, share, and grow together. Like you, I voraciously attended the early days of user-generated conferences and unconferences such as BarCamp and lobby cons and even organized commercial events such as Web 2.0 Summit, South by Southwest, TED, LeWeb, and most of the overwhelming number of conferences that defined the rise of Web 2.0, the app economy, and beyond. Together they shaped the internet, our personal and professional relationships and career trajectories, and each, in their own way, captured their zeitgeist.

There was magic in the air and on the web. These connections were digital and social gravity.

Events such as SXSW, still carry this magic. Every year, people from all walks of life, at every level, submit panels and talks to become part of the geek Spring Break in Austin and will again once we defeat COVID. You know the drill. Vote for my talk requests populate social media, which then gives way to, attend my talk as the event drew closer. Lines still bend around convention center and hotel hallways, or around blocks for outside events, for those hoping be part of meaningful conversations.

What these early social platforms and live events share, is serendipity, connection, learning, and sharing.

This is what Clubhouse feels like, right now. Its all of these things with the potential to be so much more.

Owyang helped explain why.

Text-based social networks lack the human connection that we're missing out on during isolation Live video is draining, the forced attention to stare into a lifeless camera, and two dimensions is taxing, he expressed. Clubhouse Chat app is in the Goldilocks category during quarantine, the perfect mix of voice-based emotion, yet less taxing.

Conversations and connections are currencies on Clubhouse.

Like Twitters interest graph or Facbook and Instagrams social graph, Constine elaborated on Clubhouses unique value proposition, The Clubhouse Talk Graph as he explained, represents a different set of people to follow than on Twitter or Instagram people you want to hear having unscripted talks on their expertise so those other apps cant copy its experience even if they clone its features.

Constines point is something Clubhouse has to already consider. Competition is inevitable.

For example, Twitter is working onTwitter Spaces, a Clubhouse-like feature that also allows groups to gather via voice conversations. While in limited beta, Twitter is making big moves. The company recently acquired Breaker, with the team, notably, friend and trail blazer Leah Culver, focusing exclusively on building out Twitter Spaces to compete head on with Clubhouse.

With vaccines rolling out around the world, the solitude of COVID-19, and the unique conditions driving Clubhouses growth, is finite in this phase. The world will re-open. The race for relevance post-pandemic really begins now.

This is something that Owyang has also considered.

The future of Clubhouse remains unclear, while they will continue to have skyrocketing growth to match the funding expectations, expect user fall off, as the world starts to return to physical in-person events, warmer weather, and vacations resume, he advised. For now, Clubhouse, has our attention.

And for now, it seems to have our attention, a lot of it, and also it represents an unquenchable thirst for meaningful community and engagement, especially in light of the chaos and devastation that played out in the forms of disinformation, political theater, and divisiveness across other social networks.

Clubhouse seems to be intently focused for now, using its newly infused investment to scale, open the door to more invitations, improve ranking and discovery, and also invest in a creator economy.

After all these years of social networking innovation, filters, augmented reality, live video, et al., it took an audio, drop-in audio chat app to remind us that meaningful connections and conversations online, beyond clout, really matter.

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The Latest Silicon Valley Unicorn, Clubhouse Raises $100 Million And Also Raises Attention To The Importance Of Audio-Based Social Networking - Forbes

'Itll be three weeks of 'I love my phone!' and then a whole week of 'I cant stand my phone!''

"Social media is taking over our lives starting with our hearts." Illustration published on Monday, Jan. 25, 2021.

Within the advances of social media lies a paradox.

Social networking apps like Twitter, TikTok or Instagram can help you to feel more connected to friends and loved ones who live far away. That being said, they can also bring about feelings of loneliness and isolation if you feel you are missing out on shared, in-person experiences.

Now that the pandemic has increased the physical space between friendships, some ASU students are grappling with this complicated relationship between social media and mental health.

Mareena Emran, a sophomore studying journalism and mass communication, is a former digital content creator at Buzzfeed.

She said her screen time can get up to 55 hours per week.

"It kind of comes in waves. It'll be three weeks of 'I love my phone!' and then a whole week of 'I can't stand my phone!'" Emran said.

Emran created content for Buzzfeed News' TikTok and Instagram accounts. She said the videos she worked on could take several hours to put together.

Despite finding new friends thanks to content creation, many of her long-lasting friendships were negatively affected due to her consistent social media usage.

"Although I was on social media more, a lot of my relationships with my friends were strained because I realized the amount of distance we had in between," Emran said.

Tyler Bender, a sophomore studying sports journalism, experienced the same feelings of distance between friendships due to social media.He said trying to keep up with people he met at ASU has been difficult.

"We've seen a lot of people during this time do the whole, 'Don't hit me up, Im going off of social media for a bit,'" Bender said. "There were a lot of people I didnt get to interact with."

Kaleigh Feuerstein, a senior studying marketing and management, is a social media correspondent for the W.P. Carey School of Business.Shes also a self-proclaimed social media addict, and said it had been easier to be dragged into what she calls "online rabbit holes" over the last year.

"You click on one tab and then next thing you know youre reading an article about something else," she said. "Next thing you know, two hours have gone by and you havent done anything that feels productive."

And taking classes on a screen has made falling into these holes even worse.

"Its definitely been a struggle to balance," Feuerstein said. "The fatigue of being completely online has resulted in burnout within my job, within my schoolwork, pretty much every aspect of my life."

According to an article by Steven Hickman, a clinical psychologist, when people start to be, "over-stimulated by extraneous data that we haven't had to process in the physical world, each new data point pushes us just a little bit farther away from the human-to-human connection that we all crave and appreciate."

Feuerstein said she tries to find balance with her mental health by spending more free time away from a screen, given her school and work life require she be glued to one.

"I've kind of reprioritized when I have to be on a screen versus when I dont have to," she said. "I've tried to incorporate more time outside, reading a book, or playing an instrument."

Meanwhile, Emran who has begun carving a career path in the world of social media is grateful for the opportunities the medium has offered her.

"Social media is definitely a good place to start when it comes to making friends," she said. "My freshman year, I was very lonely. I feel like that was my fault because I didnt take social media to my advantage."

When used appropriately, social media can help bridge the gap between social distances for college students.

"You never know what opportunities could come out of posting about your life," Emran said.

Reach the reporter at ghanevol@asu.edu and follow @GannonHanevold on Twitter.

Like The State Press on Facebook and follow @statepress on Twitter.

Continue supporting student journalism and donate to The State Press today.

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Hard-wired: Students grapple with pros and cons of social media in the pandemic - The State Press

close up young beautiful asian woman looking at smartphone for video online chat with friends or ... [+] surf the internet or playing mobile application in relax time, millennial technology lifestyle concept

I wasnt sure what to expect when I joined Clubhouse.

The new drop-in audio app has popped up a few times in my own Facebook Group and with friends and colleagues. It hasnt really gone mainstream yet I mentioned it to a few friends and someone thought I was talking about the Disney brand.

That might change soon. At last count, about 600,000 people have signed up and interest seems to be gaining momentum.

The idea reminds me of Marco Polo. Once you register for the invite-only iPhone app, you can then join an audio conference. Groups of people chat, with a few moderators. To speak, you raise your hand and wait for an invite. No video, no text chat its just audio for now. Also, no Android, no browser windows, and no desktop version.

Clubhouse obviously scanned my Twitter profile to see that Im writing a book (or at least guessed correctly), and within minutes I was listening to experts talk about new authors starting landing pages and email newsletters.

Since social media runs in milliseconds, I then posted on my Twitter feed asking if people would follow me, and a few dozen responded. Then a colleague started an audio chat about media relations and things blossomed from there. Ive now listened to a half dozen chats. Later, I started my own room with PR reps and a co-host and talked about story ideas. It was interactive, fun, and rewarding. E-commerce expert Akemi Sue Fisher told me she grew her following to 23,000 people in 23 days. Entrepreneur Alexa Carlin has attracted 3,000 people to her room in only a week.

The app is a bit of a trifecta, in my opinion.

First, its brand new. I first heard about it way back in May when they only had a few thousand users, but now that its catching on with the populace, the conferences are well-attended and worth the time. Second, we need new ways to network and connect. You can see icons for everyone attending the conference, follow them, and interact even during the conference. Third, its all about seeking advice. Most of us are still in a weird state of workplace evolution, heading toward long-term remote work at home. New apps pull us out of our dull routine. Networking is also a huge need.

The fact that you can learn something new is also helpful. Clubhouse is like an interactive podcast or maybe a call-in radio show. Like the Marco Polo app I mentioned earlier, there is a paradigm shift to networking in the digital realm.

I have a new term for that: passive interaction.

What it means is that, since many of us are busy living asynchronous lives in remote offices, the rise of passive interaction means we can still interact, but only when we really want to and only when we have time. I was able to join a few audio conferences without registering, clicking a link without even asking to join. I could drop out of the chat, so I was a passive listener and yet it is not a webinar. I could have also chimed in and interacted (by raising my hand) in my own timeframe.

This immediacy (everything is live) and passivity (I can just listen and not interact) is a good match for remote work because were already not adhering to normal schedules. Sometimes it feels like Im in a parked car and driving in the fast lane at the same time. Im parked because I can step away from my computer and walk the dog, grab coffee, or even leave my house. Yet these digital inputs and constant signaling arrive almost every minute of the day.

Experts say the human brain is not meant to handle that many inputs. Cal Newport in particular has noted how the brain is wired to be social and interconnected, but also to focus on things intently. Were not chipmunks. With apps like Clubhouse that promote passive interaction, it feels like you have your hand on the pause button at all times. (Zoom fatigue occurs when we cant hit pause, or at least we feel dumb when we do.) We can be social, or we can be passive, or we can drop out entirely.

Will the app continue to attract the masses? Im not sure.

Social media expert Kristen Ruby from Ruby Media Group told me she has attended conferences where hosts prioritized people who had high follower counts and showed bias. The barrier to entry to moderate a room is significantly lower than the regular conference circuit, she explained. This means that people are potentially responsible for moderating large groups of people when in actuality they may have zero formal moderator training.

I did find a few conferences where the talking heads kept talking on and on. I wondered if the app is meant for extroverts and not always the sharp exchange of ideas. For every room that seemed helpful and interactive there was a room where I felt like I was merely listening to other people chat. (Clubhouse does not provide contact information for their app or a media rep to ask about these issues; if they do, Ill add comments as needed.)

Since Im late to the Clubhouse party, I need to spend more time poking around. Anyone know of a good audio conference for people who like books, disc golf, and social media? Im going to be looking for all of those soon.

Want to chat on Clubhouse? Find me at username: jmbrandonbb

Need a Clubhouse invite? Post on my Twitter feed and Ill try to find you one.

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Clubhouse Is The New Social Media App We All Need Right Now - Forbes

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SAN FRANCISCO Jack Dorsey, Twitters chief executive, publicly wrestled this month with the question of whether his social media service had exercised too much power by cutting off Donald J. Trumps account. Mr. Dorsey wondered aloud if the solution to that power imbalance was new technology inspired by the cryptocurrency Bitcoin.

When YouTube and Facebook barred tens of thousands of Mr. Trumps supporters and white supremacists this month, many flocked to alternative apps such as LBRY, Minds and Sessions. What those sites had in common was that they were also inspired by the design of Bitcoin.

The twin developments were part of a growing movement by technologists, investors and everyday users to replace some of the internets fundamental building blocks in ways that would be harder for tech giants like Facebook and Google to control.

To do so, they are increasingly focused on new technological ideas introduced by Bitcoin, which was built atop an online network designed, at the most basic level, to decentralize power.

Unlike other types of digital money, Bitcoin are created and moved around not by a central bank or financial institution but by a broad and disparate network of computers. Its similar to the way Wikipedia is edited by anyone who wants to help, rather than a single publishing house. That underlying technology is called the blockchain, a reference to the shared ledger on which all of Bitcoins records are kept.

Companies are now finding ways to use blockchains, and similar technology inspired by it, to create social media networks, store online content and host websites without any central authority in charge. Doing so makes it much harder for any government or company to ban accounts or delete content.

These experiments are newly relevant after the biggest tech companies recently exercised their clout in ways that have raised questions about their power.

Facebook and Twitter prevented Mr. Trump from posting online after the Capitol rampage on Jan. 6, saying he had broken their rules against inciting violence. Amazon, Apple and Google stopped working with Parler, a social networking site that had become popular with the far right, saying the app had not done enough to limit violent content.

While liberals and opponents of toxic content praised the companies actions, they were criticized by conservatives, First Amendment scholars and the American Civil Liberties Union for showing that private entities could decide who gets to stay online and who doesnt.

Even if you agree with the specific decisions, I do not for a second trust the people who are making the decisions to make universally good decisions, said Jeremy Kauffman, the founder of LBRY, which provides a decentralized service for streaming videos.

That has prompted a scramble for other options. Dozens of start-ups now offer alternatives to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Amazons web hosting services, all on top of decentralized networks and shared ledgers. Many have gained millions of new users over the past few weeks, according to the data company SimilarWeb.

This is the biggest wave Ive ever seen, said Emmi Bevensee, a data scientist and the author of The Decentralized Web of Hate, a publication about the move of right-wing groups to decentralized technology. This has been discussed in niche communities, but now we are having a conversation with the broader world about how these emerging technologies may impact the world at quite large scales.

Bitcoin first emerged in 2009. Its creator, a shadowy figure known as Satoshi Nakamoto, has said its central idea was to allow anyone to open a digital bank account and hold the money in a way that no government could prevent or regulate.

Business & Economy

Jan. 26, 2021, 4:58 p.m. ET

For several years, Bitcoin gained little traction beyond a small coterie of online admirers and people who wanted to pay for illegal drugs online. But as its price rose over time, more people in Silicon Valley took notice of the unusual technical qualities underlying the cryptocurrency. Some promised that the technology could be used to redesign everything from produce tracking to online games.

The hype fell flat over the years as the underlying technology proved to be slow, prone to error and not easily accessible. But more investments and time have begun to result in software that people can actually use.

Last year, Arweave, a blockchain-based project for permanently storing and displaying websites, created an archive of sites and documents from the protests in Hong Kong that angered the Chinese government.

Minds, a blockchain-based replacement for Facebook founded in 2015, also became an online home to some of the right-wing personalities and neo-Nazis who were booted from mainstream social networks, along with fringe groups, in other countries, that have been targeted by their governments. Minds and other similar start-ups are funded by prominent venture capital firms like Andreessen Horowitz and Union Square Ventures.

One of the biggest proponents of the trend has been Mr. Dorsey, 44, who has talked about the promise of decentralized social networks through Twitter and has promoted Bitcoin through the other company he runs, Square, a financial technology provider.

His public support for Bitcoin and Bitcoin-related designs dates to around 2017. In late 2019, Mr. Dorsey announced Blue Sky, a project to develop technology aimed at giving Twitter less influence over who could and could not use the service.

After shutting down Mr. Trumps account this month, Mr. Dorsey said he would hire a team for Blue Sky to address his discomfort with Twitters power by pursuing the vision set out by Bitcoin. On Thursday, Blue Sky published the findings of a task force that has been considering potential designs.

Twitter declined to make Mr. Dorsey available for an interview but said it intended to share more soon.

Blockchains are not the only solution for those in search of alternatives to Big Techs power. Many people have recently migrated to the encrypted messaging apps Signal and Telegram, which have no need for a blockchain. Moxie Marlinspike, the creator of Signal, has said decentralization made it hard to build good software.

The experimentation with decentralized systems has nonetheless ramped up over the last month. Brave, a new browser, announced last week that it would begin integrating a blockchain-based system, known as IPFS, into its software to make web content more reliable in case big service providers went down or tried to ban sites.

The IPFS network gives access to content even if it has been censored by corporations and nation-states, Brian Bondy, a co-founder of Brave, said.

At LBRY, the blockchain-based alternative to YouTube, the number of people signing up daily has surged 250 percent from December, the company said. The newcomers appear to have largely been a motley crew of Trump fans, white supremacists and gun rights advocates who violated YouTubes rules.

When YouTube removed the latest videos from the white supremacist video blogger Way of the World last week, he tweeted: Why do we waste our time on this globalist scum? Come to LBRY for all my videos in HD quality, censorship free!

Megan Squires, a professor at Elon University who studies new computer networks, said blockchain-based networks faced hurdles because the underlying technology made it hard to exercise any control over content.

As a technology it is very cool, but you cant just sit there and be a Pollyanna and think that all information will be free, she said. There will be racists, and people will shoot each other. Its going to be the total package.

Mr. Kauffman said LBRY had prepared for these situations. While anyone will be able to create an account and register content on the LBRY blockchain that the company cannot delete similar to the way anyone can create an email address and send emails most people will get access to videos through a site on top of it. That allows LBRY to enforce moderation policies, much as Google can filter out spam and illegal content in email, he said.

Even so, Mr. Kauffman said, no one would lose basic access to online conversation.

Id be proud of almost any kind of marginalized voice using it, no matter how much I disagreed with it, he said.

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They Found a Way to Limit Big Techs Power: Using the Design of Bitcoin - The New York Times