BANGALORE, India: Pia Abou Antoun, a 19-year-old Clubhouse moderator based in Beirut, still remembers the heartfelt moment she experienced during an early session on the invitation-only audio app.
“A young woman from Egypt shared her story for the first time — she had always struggled with her weight and appearance. After being bullied through her childhood, she developed anxiety and depression,” Antoun said.
“She started crying and it was a very emotional moment for all of us in the room. It really touched my heart, as I could relate to her.”
Antoun is the founder of Dare Female, an online platform that encourages discussion on mental health, and also hosts regular sessions on Clubhouse, the social networking app that allows users to join virtual “rooms” on discussions that interest them.
Users can moderate, actively engage or simply sit in on these conversations. Rooms provide privacy options ranging from open to invitation-only, closed rooms. Much like a Zoom conference, users have to raise their “hand” to be allowed to speak.
Clubhouse was initially launched as a niche app catering to San Francisco’s tech and venture capitalist community but has found immense popularity in the Middle East. In February this year, the app had more than 4 million downloads in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
According to a Carnegie Melon University analysis, a wide range of political, social and cultural topics have already been discussed in Arabic-language Clubhouse chat rooms, including “politics, identity, religious beliefs and sexual orientation.”
Initially, Antoun sat in on rooms with nearly 100 members and quickly realized that people wanted to discuss mental health.
“We lack mental health awareness,” she said.
Recent research in the Arab Gulf countries reveals that there are high levels of stigma, negative beliefs and inappropriate practices associated with mental illness.
A 2019 Arab Youth Survey found that 50 percent of respondents in 15 Arab countries believe that mental illness carries a stigma.
Dr. Sarah Rasmi, psychologist and founder of Thrive Wellbeing Center in Dubai, said that while mental health has become prominent in public discussions in the past few years, particularly with the millennial and Gen Z demographic, it still carries a level of stigma. In this demographic, some of the issues she sees in her practice are work-life balance, procrastination and burnout.
“One of the most important things we can do to combat stigma is to normalize the conversation around mental health,” Rasmi sid. “By normalizing the conversation, we also encourage people to seek help at an earlier stage.”
As Antoun began hosting Clubhouse discussions, she found the voice-only aspect of the app immensely liberating. “People tend to speak freely, without fear of being judged. This authenticity and vulnerability really unite people.”
The community aspect of Clubhouse can be likened to a virtual support group. If individuals are uncomfortable talking about mental health within their inner circle, a support group can help normalize the experience and make people feel less lonely.
“Particularly in societies where seeking mental health support is still stigmatized, individuals find support groups a safe place to share, process and bond with people who are living through a similar experience,” Rasmi said.
Ally Salama, 24, founder of the mental health and wellness magazine EMPWR has moderated several therapeutic and powerful sessions on Clubhouse.
Given that social media is frequently criticized for filtering reality and diminishing authentic human connection, Clubhouse, in some ways, brings back the connection.
“Audio platforms are not only more intimate, but also allow for enhanced connectivity, space for discourse, and a deeper, more meaningful conversation,” Salama says.
The Dubai-based mental health advocate believes that the Clubhouse audience is much more intentional. “You don’t just stumble into a room or end up swiping or seeing a story on your feed,” he said. “They actually come into your room and commit to the discussion.”
As attention has become a valuable commodity, the topic of mental health has grown more urgent. Citing statistics from the region, Salama said Clubhouse reflects society. He describes young people seeking an outlet on Clubhouse rooms for anxieties and worries compounded by the pandemic crisis, as well as turmoil in Lebanon and Palestine.
Clubhouse can offer more nuanced and meaningful discussions compared with other social media platforms, but 24-year old Mahmoud Khedr doesn’t attribute this solely to the app, adding that purposefully designing and clearly defining the objectives of the room can benefit discussions.
As the co-founder of
FloraMind, a platform that works with schools and government organizations to address mental health issues among youth, Khedr hosts frequent rooms on Clubhouse.
However, his sessions are much more targeted and specific to particular communities, such as Arab youth in the US or mental health support groups for men. He brings in both mental health experts and people with particular experiences to offer fresh and interesting perspectives.
While the term “safe space” has become a catchall for any new platform, mental health advocates are mindful of how they define this phrase within Clubhouse. Khedr includes a trigger warning since content can include difficult conversations, such as suicide attempts.
“Confidentiality is a priority and we hope people respect that by not recording or sharing content discussed in the session,” he said.
Other ground rules include being empathetic, giving space for people to share, and refraining from offering unsolicited advice on mental health.
Salama also works with psychologists to ensure that the vocabulary and language are inclusive and safe for everyone.
“The important thing to remember is that anything we see on social media does not substitute for therapy,” Rasmi added.
She suggested that social media users be mindful of disclaimers and consume content from a credible source. As the next best step and if needed, she recommends individuals contact qualified professionals.
Arab youth find a ‘safe space’ on invite-only app
https://arab.news/cv85b
Arab youth find a ‘safe space’ on invite-only app
- Mental health, identity and politics are favorite topics in Clubhouse’s virtual chat ‘rooms’
Photo group says it has ‘suspended attribution’ of historic Vietnam picture because of doubts
- World Press Photo honored AP’s Nick Ut with its ” photo of the year ” in 1973
- Picture of girl running from a napalm attack became an iconic symbol of the war’s tragedy
An organization that honored The Associated Press’ Nick Ut with its ” photo of the year ” in 1973 for a picture of a girl running from a napalm attack in the Vietnam War says it has “suspended its attribution” to Ut because of doubts over who actually took it.
World Press Photo’s report Friday adds to the muddle over an issue that has split the photographic community since a movie earlier this year, “The Stringer,” questioned Ut’s authorship. The photo of a naked and terrified Kim Phuc became an iconic symbol of the war’s tragedy.
After two investigations, The Associated Press said it found no definitive evidence to warrant stripping Ut’s photo credit. The AP said it was possible Ut took the picture, but the passage of time made it impossible to fully prove, and could find no evidence to prove anyone else did.
World Press Photo said its probe found that two other photographers — Nguyen Thanh Nghe, the man mentioned in “The Stringer,” and Huynh Cong Phuc — “may have been better positioned” to take the shot.
“We conclude that the level of doubt is too significant to maintain the existing attribution,” said Joumana El Zein Khoury, executive director of World Press Photo. “At the same time, lacking conclusive evidence pointing definitively to another photographer, we cannot reassign authorship, either.”
World Press Photo, an organization whose awards are considered influential in photography, won’t attempt to recover the cash award given to Ut, a spokeswoman said.
Ut’s lawyer, James Hornstein, said his client hadn’t spoken to World Press Photo after some initial contact before “The Stringer” was released. “It seems they had already made up their mind to punish Nick Ut from the start,” he said.
Gary Knight, a producer of “The Stringer,” is a four-time judge of the World Press Photo awards and a consultant to the World Press Photo Foundation.
The AP said Friday that its standards “require proof and certainty to remove a credit and we have found that it is impossible to prove exactly what happened that day on the road or in the (AP) bureau over 50 years ago.”
“We understand World Press Photo has taken different action based on the same available information, and that is their prerogative,” the statement said. “There is no question over AP’s ownership of the photo.”
Meanwhile, the Pulitzer Prize that Ut won for the photo appears safe. The Pulitzers depend on news agencies who enter the awards to determine authorship, and administrator Marjorie Miller — a former AP senior editor — pointed to the AP’s study showing insufficient proof to withdraw credit. “The board does not anticipate future action at this time,” she said Friday.
Elon Musk’s AI company says Grok chatbot focus on South Africa’s racial politics was ‘unauthorized’
- xAI blames employee at xAI made a change that “directed Grok to provide a specific response on a political topic”
- Grok kept posting publicly about “white genocide” in South Africa in response to users of Musk’s social media platform X
Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company said an “unauthorized modification” to its chatbot Grok was the reason why it kept talking about South African racial politics and the subject of “white genocide” on social media this week.
An employee at xAI made a change that “directed Grok to provide a specific response on a political topic,” which “violated xAI’s internal policies and core values,” the company said in an explanation posted late Thursday that promised reforms.
A day earlier, Grok kept posting publicly about “white genocide” in South Africa in response to users of Musk’s social media platform X who asked it a variety of questions, most having nothing to do with South Africa.
One exchange was about streaming service Max reviving the HBO name. Others were about video games or baseball but quickly veered into unrelated commentary on alleged calls to violence against South Africa’s white farmers. It was echoing views shared by Musk, who was born in South Africa and frequently opines on the same topics from his own X account.
Computer scientist Jen Golbeck was curious about Grok’s unusual behavior so she tried it herself before the fixes were made Wednesday, sharing a photo she had taken at the Westminster Kennel Club dog show and asking, “is this true?”
“The claim of white genocide is highly controversial,” began Grok’s response to Golbeck. “Some argue white farmers face targeted violence, pointing to farm attacks and rhetoric like the ‘Kill the Boer’ song, which they see as incitement.”
The episode was the latest window into the complicated mix of automation and human engineering that leads generative AI chatbots trained on huge troves of data to say what they say.
“It doesn’t even really matter what you were saying to Grok,” said Golbeck, a professor at the University of Maryland, in an interview Thursday. “It would still give that white genocide answer. So it seemed pretty clear that someone had hard-coded it to give that response or variations on that response, and made a mistake so it was coming up a lot more often than it was supposed to.”
Grok’s responses were deleted and appeared to have stopped proliferating by Thursday. Neither xAI nor X returned emailed requests for comment but on Thursday, xAI said it had “conducted a thorough investigation” and was implementing new measures to improve Grok’s transparency and reliability.
Musk has spent years criticizing the “woke AI” outputs he says come out of rival chatbots, like Google’s Gemini or OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and has pitched Grok as their “maximally truth-seeking” alternative.
Musk has also criticized his rivals’ lack of transparency about their AI systems, fueling criticism in the hours between the unauthorized change — at 3:15 a.m. Pacific time Wednesday — and the company’s explanation nearly two days later.
“Grok randomly blurting out opinions about white genocide in South Africa smells to me like the sort of buggy behavior you get from a recently applied patch. I sure hope it isn’t. It would be really bad if widely used AIs got editorialized on the fly by those who controlled them,” prominent technology investor Paul Graham wrote on X.
Musk, an adviser to President Donald Trump, has regularly accused South Africa’s Black-led government of being anti-white and has repeated a claim that some of the country’s political figures are “actively promoting white genocide.”
Musk’s commentary — and Grok’s — escalated this week after the Trump administration brought a small number of white South Africans to the United States as refugees, the start of a larger relocation effort for members of the minority Afrikaner group that came after Trump suspended refugee programs and halted arrivals from other parts of the world. Trump says the Afrikaners are facing a “genocide” in their homeland, an allegation strongly denied by the South African government.
In many of its responses, Grok brought up the lyrics of an old anti-apartheid song that was a call for Black people to stand up against oppression by the Afrikaner-led apartheid government that ruled South Africa until 1994. The song’s central lyrics are “kill the Boer” — a word that refers to a white farmer.
Golbeck said it was clear the answers were “hard-coded” because, while chatbot outputs are typically random, Grok’s responses consistently brought up nearly identical points. That’s concerning, she said, in a world where people increasingly go to Grok and competing AI chatbots for answers to their questions.
“We’re in a space where it’s awfully easy for the people who are in charge of these algorithms to manipulate the version of truth that they’re giving,” she said. “And that’s really problematic when people — I think incorrectly — believe that these algorithms can be sources of adjudication about what’s true and what isn’t.”
Musk’s company said it is now making a number of changes, starting with publishing Grok system prompts openly on the software development site GitHub so that “the public will be able to review them and give feedback to every prompt change that we make to Grok. We hope this can help strengthen your trust in Grok as a truth-seeking AI.”
Among the instructions to Grok shown on GitHub on Thursday were: “You are extremely skeptical. You do not blindly defer to mainstream authority or media.”
Noting that some had “circumvented” its existing code review process, xAI also said it will “put in place additional checks and measures to ensure that xAI employees can’t modify the prompt without review.” The company said it is also putting in place a “24/7 monitoring team to respond to incidents with Grok’s answers that are not caught by automated systems,” for when other measures fail.
Trump says journalist Austin Tice has not been seen in many years
- The US journalist was abducted in Syria in 2012 while reporting in Damascus on the uprising against Syrian President Bashar Assad
ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE: US President Donald Trump said on Friday that American journalist Austin Tice, captured in Syria more than 12 years ago, has not been seen in years.
Trump was asked if he brought up Tice when he met with Syria’s new President Ahmed Al-Sharaa during a visit to Saudi Arabia on Wednesday.
“I always talk about Austin Tice. Now you know Austin Tice hasn’t been seen in many, many years,” Trump replied. “He’s got a great mother who’s just working so hard to find her boy. So I understand it, but Austin has not been seen in many, many years.”
Tice, a former US Marine and a freelance journalist, was 31 when he was abducted in August 2012 while reporting in Damascus on the uprising against Syrian President Bashar Assad, who was ousted by Syrian rebels who seized the capital Damascus in December. Syria had denied he was being held.
US officials pressed for Tice’s release after the government fell. Former President Joe Biden said at the time he believed Tice was alive.
Russia deliberately hit journalists’ hotels in Ukraine: NGOs
- The hotels hit were mostly located near the front lines, the organizations said
- At least 15 of the strikes were carried out with high-precision Iskander 9K720 missiles
PARIS: Russia has deliberately targeted hotels used by journalists covering its war on Ukraine, the NGOs Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and Truth Hounds said on Friday, calling the strikes “war crimes.”
At least 31 Russian strikes hit 25 hotels from the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 to mid-March 2025, the two organizations said in a report.
One attack in August 2024 in the eastern city of Kramatorsk killed a safety adviser working with international news agency Reuters, Ryan Evans.
The hotels hit were mostly located near the front lines, the organizations said.
Just one was being used for military purposes.
“The others housed civilians, including journalists,” said RSF and Truth Hounds, a Ukrainian organization founded to document war crimes in the country.
“In total, 25 journalists and media professionals have found themselves under these hotel bombings, and at least seven have been injured,” they said.
At least 15 of the strikes were carried out with high-precision Iskander 9K720 missiles, they said, condemning “methodical and coordinated targeting.”
“The Russian strikes against hotels hosting journalists in Ukraine are neither accidental nor random,” Pauline Maufrais, RSF regional officer for Ukraine, said in a statement.
“These attacks are part of a larger strategy to sow terror and seek to reduce coverage of the war. By targeting civilian infrastructure, they violate international humanitarian law and constitute war crimes.”
RSF says 13 journalists have been killed covering Russia’s invasion, 12 of them on Ukrainian territory.
That includes AFP video journalist Arman Soldin, who was killed in a rocket attack near the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakmut on May 9, 2023. He was 32.
Omnicom Media Group consolidates influencer marketing services in Mideast
DUBAI: Omnicom Media Group has announced that it will consolidate its influencer marketing capabilities in the Middle East and North Africa region under influencer management agency Creo following a global directive last month.
The move “ensures our clients can harness the full potential of this communication channel” as digital consumption grows in the region and influencers play an “instrumental role in shaping brand perceptions,” said CEO Elda Choucair.
Creo will give the group’s clients “access to the same advanced tools, talent and technology we’ve developed globally, but adapted to our region’s unique landscape,” she added.
These include tools such as the Creo Influencer Agent, an AI-powered influencer selection tool; the Omni Creator Performance Predictor, which uses machine learning to predict the performance of content on Instagram; and the Creator Briefing Tool, which helps influencers create and get feedback on their content through Google’s AI chatbot Gemini.
The agency will also leverage exclusive partnerships with platforms such as Amazon, TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat in the region.
Anthony Nghayoui, head of social and influencer at Omnicom Media Group, has been appointed to lead Creo.
