Back from a sheltered-in-place July 4th vacation, complete with Hamilton and a disastrous attempt at s’mores. They’re more complicated than you think!
You could argue that Taylor Lorenz was Clubhouse’s biggest fan. When the New York Times tech culture reporter noticed the new app in April, she instantly signed up. She had no idea that the real-time audio-based social network would soon become invite-only, with rank-and-file journalists not welcome. (Including me, I figured, so I haven’t asked to get in.) The very limited membership in the app’s testing stage was dominated by Silicon Valley insiders and celebrities, who tantalized the hoi polloi on Twitter with hints of the cool conversations they were enjoying. But Lorenz was allowed to stay, with no restrictions, and this paid off for Clubhouse when she, along with colleague Erin Griffith, wrote a positive piece about the new venture. The story came soon after VC firm Andreessen Horowitz reportedly put $12 million into Clubhouse, valuing the two-person company with about 1,500 users and no revenues at around $100 million.
None of that VC stuff interested Lorenz, who was more excited about the platform itself, which allows people to open up virtual rooms and host voice conversations. The hosts invite people to a stage where their microphones are turned on, while those in the audience listen, awaiting approval from the moderator before speaking. To Lorenz, Clubhouse’s value did not lie in the big discussions in rooms where rich VCs got schooled on social issues by the likes of DeRay Mckesson and MC Hammer. The questions asked by the elite attendees were not especially useful, she thought—certainly not as good as questions journalists would ask. (Lorenz recalls one VC asking an FBI hostage negotiator how he washed his vegetables before barbecuing.) But she was truly engaged by smaller rooms, where the audio-only discourse allowed her to quickly bond with like-minded people—generally younger people on the lower rungs of the VC world, who were more connected to pop culture. “I became tight friends with them and loved hanging out on the app,” she says. At one point Lorenz was spending three to four hours a day on Clubhouse.
But the relationship turned sour. All too often she found that as a young woman, she had difficulty getting recognized to speak in the bigger rooms when she had something to say. And she found herself singled out as a working journalist. “I’ve heard a lot of anti-media sentiment,” she says, which was unusual for her, since she generally covered TikTok stars, not VCs.
Then, last week on Twitter, a VC named Balaji Srinivasan wrote a mocking reply to one of Lorenz’s tweets, involving alleged misbehavior of the CEO of the luggage startup Away. Lorenz defended herself and called out what she characterized as previous harassment by Srinivasan and others on a variety of platforms, including Clubhouse. A battle of tweets ensued, and a wider argument erupted around the increasing animus between press and venture capitalists.
The controversy moved to Clubhouse that night, when a roomful of VCs and others continued the discussion. (There is a record of this, courtesy of Motherboard, which obtained a leaked audio.) Lorenz was called to the stage, but before she could speak, the moderator called Srinivasan to the stage. “I literally hadn't even said two words out of my mouth,” she says. Disgusted, Lorenz left, but the conversation continued, with Lorenz as a subject. When someone pointed out that her departure indicated that she felt the environment was hostile, initially, some people expressed sympathy. But that kind feeling quickly dissipated. A man identified by Motherboard as Srinivasan said, "Is Taylor afraid of a brown man on the street? Then she shouldn't be afraid of a brown man in Clubhouse.” Another speaker, herself female, accused Lorenz of playing “the woman card.” Overall, the conversation became a free-for-all attack on the press, with speculation that journalists even “covered up” the Covid-19 pandemic. The audio clip generally captures a group of cosseted, somewhat haughty people of privilege, indignant that journalists have the power to criticize them. (When I asked him for comment, Srinivasan wouldn’t answer directly, but he retweeted comments from himself and others, generally tweets charging journalists with acting in bad faith.)
This very public episode exposed that Clubhouse, at least in this nascent state, had given little thought to policing the discussions that occur on its platform. For people learning about Clubhouse for the first time, it was a disastrous introduction. On this week’s popular The Pivot podcast, Scott Galloway, an investor often critical of VC culture, pretty much declared that the Andreessen Horowitz investment in Clubhouse was sunken money. I might not go that far, but I feel that its chances to succeed have plummeted dramatically.
One might have expected the Clubhouse founders to publicly declare that their app is intended to be a place where everyone feels safe, and announce firm protections against harassment, as well as strict moderation guidelines. But they have been silent. Those close to them offer rationalizations along the lines of the following: “We are a new company just trying things out with a limited audience. Overly harsh restrictions on speech might constrain our innovation. In any case, it is way too soon to judge us harshly in this experimental stage.”
That argument reminds me of Mark Zuckerberg’s frequent excuse that Facebook started in a dorm room and thus really can’t be blamed for failing to anticipate some of the global consequences of its policies. (In fact, within six months of its debut, Facebook was in Silicon Valley, funded and advised by some of the top minds in tech.) This doesn’t fly in 2020, when it is apparent to all that tech companies must be aware of potential abuses of their products, and that they will be judged harshly for ignoring this. When does a small company have to make sure its policies are strong enough and sufficiently enforced to prevent toxic consequences? Certainly at the point where its valuation reaches $100 million.
Meanwhile, Clubhouse’s biggest fan will no longer be using her secret handshake to get into the audio sanctuary of the Silicon Valley elite. “I don’t plan on opening the app again,” says Lorenz. “I don’t want to support any network that doesn’t take user safety seriously.”
The press-versus-tech tension is old news. When professional journalists began covering the tech industry in the early 1980s (previously, starry-eyed hobbyists wrote about the new devices), the dominant companies were unused to spirited criticism. In January 1985 (sadly, not a typo), I wrote a rather tough treatise about IBM’s PCjr, which got a response from IBM even more vitriolic than my criticism. Fortunately, Popular Computing defended me. Here’s what I had written:
The PCjr calls for something other than a standard hardware review. The machine is not merely another alternative for prospective buyers: It represents a major chapter in the history of personal computers. Despite its unprepossessing appearance, the PCjr is a virtual Rosetta stone whose meaning and message must be understood in order to understand the success or failure of any home computer that comes thereafter. We must not only evaluate the PCjr as a potential addition to our home and office, but we must seat it at the dinner table to gauge its conversation, lay it on the couch to psychoanalyze it, pull down its drawers to check for rashes. And once the verdict is delivered, we must ponder why. To do less would be to forget the astonishing importance with which we all imbued this machine. Indeed, the entire computer industry was nearly hysterical with anticipation in the months before November 1, 1983, when IBM hastily convened the nabobs of computerdom to show for once and for all the reality of the chimera that people had been calling “Peanut” … Though its maker seems dedicated to supporting it, the machine has the smell of death about it.
Jason asks, “My elderly father is recently recovered from Covid and tested negative. Is it safe to visit him (with or without a mask)? Do we have any data yet on if people who have had Covid are now immune?”
Jason, I know I invited the world to ask me anything. (And folks, please do—my mailbag is feeling light!) But that doesn’t mean I’m qualified to answer anything. I am not a doctor, and I don’t even play one on TV. And with this novel virus, even a doctor might not be able to give you a definitive answer. But you should definitely seek medical advice, as opposed to newsletter-writer advice, before seeing your dad. (Wear a mask anyway.) As far as the second part of your question, I can refer you to an interview I conducted recently with Larry Brilliant, an epidemiologist who predicted the pandemic and also helped eradicate smallpox. Though it didn’t make it into the final version, I asked him whether people could get Covid twice. He doubted it. “How many people have you seen on national television who tell you that they had the disease, they had a test, it was positive, they got out of the hospital, and they were better—and then they got the disease two months later?” he asked rhetorically. “The answer is zero.” He did add that when millions are involved there might be very rare exceptions, like people with rare immunological disorders. Anyway, read the interview, you won’t be sorry!
You can submit questions to mail@wired.com. Write ASK LEVY in the subject line.
The Ayn Rand Institute, that icon of self-sufficiency, took a bundle of money from the government’s payment protection plan. Say it ain’t so, Howard Roark!
I mentioned it above, but just a reminder—if you haven’t read my second interview with Larry Brilliant, stop what you’re doing and read it now. I’m also OK with having you finish what you’re doing first. Because what you’re doing is reading this newsletter!
Also on Covid, I interviewed the CEO of Novartis, who says that he’s building trust after his company’s price-collusion misbehavior. And don’t blame him for that hydroxychloroquine thing.
The much touted 5G revolution is making us hate each other more.
And now some happy news: Al Gore says things are looking up. Get the guy a doctor.
I promise to be back next week. Maybe by then I’ll have my Clubhouse invitation!
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