What Next TBD: How Clubhouse Cracked China’s Firewall

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4 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 12 February 2021

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For most of the last year, Clubhouse—the audio-only social media app—has been dominated by conversations about business, branding, and Elon Musk. But as users picked up the app around the globe, something extraordinary happened. Censors in mainland China overlooked it. And for two weeks in February, it hosted a series of unusual, unfiltered conversations. Han Chinese, Hong Kongers, Taiwanese, and Uighurs all flooded to the app to speak freely about authoritarianism, democracy, and propaganda. Here’s what happened when the censors looked the other way. Guest: Melissa Chan, journalist with the Global Reporting Centre Host Lizzie O’Leary Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	With a written under the radar genre or a proper out there podcast, sometimes it's better
0:06.2	when you get weird, especially when it comes to switching up your soft drink, introducing
0:10.7	new Dr. Pepper Zero with the same blend of 23 unique flavors, it tastes just as weird
0:17.6	as regular Dr. Pepper, but with zero sugar and zero calories, it's a taste you can't
0:23.1	quite put your finger on, weird, but in a surprisingly good way, try more weird with
0:28.1	Dr. Pepper Zero.
0:34.7	When a friend tried to get reporter Melissa Chan to join the app Clubhouse over the summer,
0:39.3	she wasn't interested.
0:40.6	Frankly, it sounded really unappealing to me, so she wanted to invite me because it was
0:46.2	invite only and it still is invite only, and I just passed on it.
0:51.4	Why?
0:52.4	Why was it not appealing to you?
0:54.3	Because like a lot of startups in Silicon Valley, the founders get their friends to start
1:00.4	using the product in the beginning, and so it was all these tech people talking about
1:06.4	financing and entrepreneurs and venture capitalists.
1:10.7	Clubhouse is a social audio app, meaning that instead of there being groups like on Facebook
1:16.3	where people respond to each other's posts, there are rooms, channels really, where up
1:21.6	to 5,000 people can be part of a real-time conversation out loud.
1:26.7	Eventually, Melissa got enough Clubhouse invitations that Curiosity got the better ever, and she joined.
1:32.1	When I first went on, it was very much exactly like what I expected.
1:36.3	It confirmed all my worst expectations about the app.
1:39.9	You know what?
	...

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