Jam, the open source alternative to Clubhouse

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Since it's on everyone's lips, let's finally talk about ourselves too Clubhouse. And we can't help but do it our way, or by proposing Jam, the alternative Open source ¹ to Clubhouse! From Clubhouse you will almost certainly have already heard of it. Besides, when Elon Musk invites publicly Putin to chat on this new platform ² you certainly can't ignore it and pretend it doesn't exist!

Clubhouse is an application created by Paul Davison (formerly the creator of Highlight, acquired in 2016 by Pinterest ³) and from Rohan Seth (former engineer of Google ⁴). To date it is an exclusive for iPhone.

It is a real social network that allows you to have conversations by creating rooms dedicated to any theme. In these rooms there is an administrator who will be able to enable members to intervene while the others will only be able to listen. It has been used a lot lately by celebrities such as the aforementioned Elon Musk and many others.

Clubhouse, invitations and privacy

The fact that it is only available on iPhone and that you can only register by invitation makes it so-called hype to the stars. Furthermore, as we were saying, it is to all intents and purposes a social network as you can sign up and follow each other. As unfortunately often happens, however, applications that reach the general public always have major flaws in terms of privacy and data protection. Let's find out from Network Wars Of Carola Frediani (which we recommend, as always, to follow) That Clubhouse may not meet the requirements of the European Privacy Regulation (GDPR) ⁵). It is also not entirely clear how this data is used ⁶, so much so that even the Italian Privacy Guarantor wants to see clearly ⁴.

Others who have asked questions about Clubhouse's privacy issue are Ernesto Belisario on The fact And Francesco Micozzi on Key4biz. For many, in fact, voice could be the new gold mine for advertising profiling and beyond and could be decidedly tempting for those who offer smart speakers such as Amazon, Apple and Google for example ⁷.

Finally, according to some Stanford researchers, there is a vulnerability that exposes the identities of users of some rooms to China ⁸.

Jam, the alternative Open source at Clubhouse

In short, in all of this, we take the opportunity to talk to you about Jam! The name comes from the musical term jam sessions and you can do more or less everything it allows you to do Clubhouse. The difference is that you will not be profiled, there are no invitations and anyone can really use it. In fact, there isn't even an application available: everything is done via the web, just the way we like it!

All you need to do is go to the site, create a room and put a description on it. Once the room has started you can pass the link on to anyone you want to participate. With simple and intuitive keys you can invite someone to talk to you, and finally you can enable or disable the audio. Once inside you can decide on a nickname and eventually also add an email to be contacted.

Jam is a project Open source and easily installable on any server. So not only will you be able to use the site jam.systems but you can also create your own if necessary Instance staff to use to create the your Clubhouse.

In short, if your need is just to have a room in which to talk with friends, there is no need to follow the fashion of the moment: you can simply create a jam sessions without leaving your friends with Android outside the door 😊

Source code

ALTERNATIVES TO JAM

• An alternative to Jam is Mumble, a cross-platform VoIP application released under a free license. It's definitely less captivating of Jam but has been around longer and is very stable and easy to use.

• Telegram, well yes. On Telegram we have arrived at Voice Chat version 2.0 with an incredible amount of really cool features. It really has nothing to envy of Clubhouse!

1. Code on GitLab[↩]
2. Putin is seriously considering accepting Elon Musk's Clubhouse invitation[↩]
3. Pinterest acquires the startup behind Highlight, Shorts, and Roll apps[↩]
4. The Italian Privacy Guarantor wants to see clearly about Clubhouse[↩][↩]
5. According to Caspar, Clubhouse does not meet the requirements of the European Privacy Regulation (GDPR[↩]
6. Hyped audio-networking app Clubhouse thrives in Germany[↩]
7. Clubhouse, ban on under 18s and bots. Review the Key4biz talk[↩]
8. Clubhouse has a problem with data storage[↩]

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