Clubhouse names Dan Ashton as grievance officer for India

Drop-in live audio platform Clubhouse has named Dan Ashton as grievance officer for India, as mandated under the new IT rules in India.

Ashton, who was named under Clubhouse's legal entity Alpha Exploration Co, will be based out of the US. “(The) Grievance Officer should only be contacted by users in India as per India’s Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021. Additional user verification may be requested,” per the information on its website.

The new IT rules, which mandated significant social media intermediaries with over 5 million users to appoint officers locally, came into effect on May 26, 2021. This includes chief compliance officer, nodal and grievance officer based in India.

Other US-based media majors such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and WhatsApp have appointed the officers.

According to a report by Medianama, based on Clubhouse’s statement, the audio social network platform does not come under significant social media intermediary and hence does not require the officer to be based out of India.

In the case of Clubhouse, this appointment follows a jump in user base in India, with over 8.6 million downloads as of July 23, according to data from mobile analytics platform SensorTower.

Globally, the company has 30 million downloads. But the download trends are on the decline again.

Declining downloads

Clubhouse gained popularity with a spike in downloads when Elon Musk and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg came on the platform. But downloads slowed down later declined. Since its Android launch, however, the platform has regained traction.

After recording 14,000 downloads in April, downloads spiked to 1.5 million in May, followed by 5.9 million in June 2021 following the Android launch. This declined to 1.1 million as of July 23, 2021. Globally as well, downloads have declined from 7.7 million in June 2021 to 1.9 million as of July 23, 2021.