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“Clubhouse” would like to access your contacts.

Knowing what apps do with contact data after issuing a prompt like this, my default answer is no every time I see this prompt. There’s been plenty of criticism of apps that use these prompts over the last couple of weeks, mainly aimed at Clubhouse as they built their entire invitation system around needing databases full of contact data.

I wish Clubhouse (and other apps) didn’t do this, and I tapped no when it asked me. That said, the idea behind this type of feature isn’t a bad one. It’d be great if apps could automatically match me with people I care about or want to interact with. Unfortunately, picking which of the records in my contacts database fit that definition is tough, if not impossible, to automate.

I saw some suggestions that Apple should solve this with a Photos.app style “select which contacts can be accessed” permission, but is anyone going to go through their contacts manually, picking and choosing? I have just under a thousand records in mine from many years of personal+work life, and I bet that’s nothing compared to some people. It’s not practical. Maybe a solution would be to let the permission be on groups rather than individual contacts, but who’s contact database is that well organised? Mine isn’t.

The other popular theory on how to solve this is that Apple should provide an API to hash contact information, allowing apps to match people without getting access to personal information. That’s one of those ideas that feels better and solves one aspect of the problem, but bad situations are inevitable when you match a full contacts database.

I don’t see any solution to this problem that doesn’t need massive and fundamental change to identity and how we map social connections. Smart people have been thinking about this problem for a long time. I remember watching this talk at ETech 2006, more than 15 years ago. 👴 OpenID failed, open social graphs failed, and the walled gardens won, even if that garden is just your contacts database.

The best solution for right now? Don’t ask for contacts permission, don’t attempt to match people, and don’t try to discover connections. That creates a terrible user experience and will never drive that “hockey stick” growth. It’s the only solution that stops other people from uploading my contact information and prevents ugly situations like the one I linked to above. I wish there were a better solution because the problem is real, but I don’t think there is.

I hope you weren’t hoping for a magic bullet in the last sentence… 😬🤷‍♂️😂

Dave Verwer  

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