Dear social audio app founders:

Don’t.

Why? The main value propositions of social audio apps are listening, speaking, community-building, & spreading information. In these apps, the primary driver will always be speaking, which prioritizes NOT people who are good at speaking but people who are good at holding the mic.

The people who are good at holding the mic a.k.a. “holding space” are too often correlated with the people who are not as concerned with health and safety. If you don’t care about giving voice to others, you’re not gonna be prone to care about others period.

This in turn has an inverse correlation to the values of community-building and spreading (useful, helpful, & healthy) information.

Basically what we’re left with is a VC-funded audio Chatroulette/Omegle. This is not a good thing for society.

Make no mistake, I’ve made real friendships on Clubhouse that have literally changed my life. But I have to be able to look at that alongside all of the dangers and risks of this sort of platform.

There’s a lot more to say about this.

Last thought for now: There are two main perspectives of people who believe Clubhouse is a troublesome place. There are the @TaylorLorenz’s who believe it’s because they’ve refused to properly enforce safety, and folks like me who believe the whole thing is a Pandora’s box.