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Who gets in the Clubhouse?

Good morning! Sorry to all the Chiefs fans out there, and extremely begrudging congrats to Tom Brady. Anyway, this Monday, everyone is mad — and everyone is wrong — about Clubhouse's blocking policy, and a look at the competition to be @realDonaldTrump's new home.
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Connecting everyone is not a universally good thing. (Mark Zuckerberg was wrong about that one.) And increasingly, the internet is turning to group chats, private Discords and other means of staying out of the internet's public square.
But the lines between public and private are a mess. And nowhere is that clearer right now than on Clubhouse. As ever, there's nothing I like less than litigating arguments between tech and reporters, but here's the TL;DR:
With Clubhouse specifically, everybody's wrong. It absolutely changes the platform's dynamics if you're telling some new users to follow a person who is reasonably likely to immediately block them, in turn preventing them from using key parts of the platform. Marc Andreessen blocking people on Twitter doesn't prevent them from following Elon Musk, but it stops them from listening to Musk when Andreessen is speaking in or moderating the room on Clubhouse. But! Andreessen can block whoever he wants. (He blocked me!) Them's the rules.
The real question is, is Clubhouse a private thing or a public thing?
These aren't just questions for Clubhouse, but for any online communication. If it's just you and me talking, I don't think anyone wants platforms or moderators policing what we say. (WhatsApp's privacy shenanigans prove it.) If it's 3 billion of us in the News Feed, we absolutely need those things. Discord, Telegram, Clubhouse, Reddit and so many others all exist in a complicated middle ground, and that's where the future of the internet lives too.
What is a post-presidency Donald Trump worth to a burgeoning, conservative-friendly social network? Worth betting the company on, apparently:
Jason Miller, a longtime Trump aide, told The Sunday Times that Trump thinks "not being on social media, and not being subject to the hateful echo chamber that social media too frequently becomes, has actually been good." True for us all, really. But other reports have said Trump is itching to get back online, and continues to think about starting his own social network.
The Boring Company could get $30 million to tunnel under Miami, Mayor Francis Suarez said:
Microsoft is suspending political contributions to those who objected to certifying the election, CVP Fred Humphries said:
Chris Cox rejoining Facebook was an even bigger deal than it seemed, Ron Conway said:
Twitter, Cisco, Uber and Lyft all report earnings this week.
The second Trump impeachment trial begins tomorrow, and is sure to be interesting.
We're keeping a close eye on the privacy battle between Facebook and Apple, as Apple gets closer to rolling out the tracking notifications that Facebook and others see as something of an existential crisis.
Yep, it's SoftBank earnings day. The slide deck was full of glorious imagery as per usual, and the numbers weren't bad either: Its Vision Fund posted an $8 billion profit for last quarter.
Some serious traffic is heading to the fourth planet in the solar system. Three different spacecraft, launched from three different places — the UAE, China and the U.S. — will all hit local orbit in the next couple of weeks. If Pixar hasn't already optioned the rights and made plans for "Wall-E 2," I don't know what it's waiting for.
Update: This story has been updated to correctly name the three countries whose spacecrafts are heading to Mars this month. It's the UAE, China and the U.S.
Today's Source Code was written by David Pierce, with help from Anna Kramer and Shakeel Hashim. Thoughts, questions, tips? Send them to david@protocol.com, or our tips line, tips@protocol.com. Enjoy your day; see you tomorrow.
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