India Tops the Table in Clubhouse Requests from Governments | TechTree.com

India Tops the Table in Clubhouse Requests from Governments

More than half of all such requests received by the company came from India, of which half sought information about users

 

Monitoring digital identity is increasingly getting accepted as a means to oversee national security and India is no laggard on this front. In fact, recent data shared by social audio app Clubhouse suggests that our country might be at the forefront of seeking information about users on such platforms. 

The social media platform shared figures of governmental requests as part of its transparency report, the first from the company that arrived last year. It suggests that of the 92 such requests that it received in 2021 from governments across the world during, 59 were from India. The report seeks to list out how they responded to such requests and action taken thereof. 

Of the 59 requests from India, as many as 24 pertained to the government asking for user information while another similar number were sought to be blocked or taken down besides sharing information about the user, the report says. However, Clubhouse did not reveal how many of the requests got their response or what was the compliance percentage. 

The report just said that they would only review requests that were in writing and that in cases where they were too broad or too vague, these never even got to the processing stage by members of the Clubhouse team. 

The statement says, “When we receive requests, we require government bodies to include the name of the issuing authority and agent and provide the pertinent legal documents behind their request.”

Readers would be aware that the transparency report complies with the IT Rules, 2021 that require social media platforms to come out with periodic reports of this nature. It provides data on how a platform responded to user queries and government requests for data. As per the rules, any social media company with more than 5 million active users needs to comply with similar regulations in the said country. 

On its part, Clubhouse also provided details of banned or suspended users for failing to comply with the community guidelines. The report said they received more than 8,200 appeals against bans during 2021 of which about 1,600 were then overturned. 

In other news, audio streaming platforms are attempting to get users to loosen their purse strings for audio content in India through student discounts, daily and weekly plans as well as annual subscriptions and bundled partnerships. 

A report published in The Mint quotes Siddhartha Roy of Hungama Digital Media to suggest that the company has come up with several innovations for middle class Indian wallets. Besides the regular cashbacks and co-branded offers with Amazon, Flipkart, Paytm and PhonePe, they were also coming up with virtual concerts where users can attend for just Rs.20.  


TAGS: clubhouse, social audio

 
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