Block One pursues Social Media Dreams. Block.One, the multi billion dollar startup that built the EOSIO platform, announced a new social media platform called Voice.
Block.one says Voice will stand out by not turning its users into products.
In a release, CEO Brendan Blumer said:
“Our content. Our data. Our attention. These are all incredibly valuable things. But right now, it’s the platform, not the user, that reaps the reward. By design, they run by auctioning our information to advertisers, pocketing the profit, and flooding our feeds with hidden agendas dictated by the highest bidder. Voice changes that.”
Voice will run on the EOS blockchain. EOS will be upgrading to a faster Version 2.0, so Voice will benefit from the upgrade as well. Since EOS is a public chain, everything posted to EOS will be public.
This is in stark contrast to Facebook, who said they would be moving towards. “Privacy focused vision for social networking”
At the Event in Washington DC, Blumer came out on stage and offered a manifesto against social media as we know it. (You can watch the full keynote here.)
“Our attention has been captured,” Blumer told the crowd. “Social media has not been a good friend to us.”
He made a promise that Block.One’s new social media product would not be dictated by algorithms. Voices would not have dominance based on algorithms. Everyone would have an equal shot to be heard.
“Everyone – the user, the platform, the contributor – plays by the same rules,” Blumer said.
Without going into the details of how this would be done, Blumer also promised to swiftly deal and stop trolls and harassers on the platform. We look forward to seeing how they succeed where others, like Facebook, has failed.
At the end of Blumer’s talk, the massive screen behind him exhorted viewers to “Unlike shady algorithms” and “Unfollow being followed.”
Block.One’s CTO spoke next – Dan Larimer, who previously co-founded Steemit before leaving for Block.One in 2017.
It was then that Larimer announced a new token, the Voice Token. He explained how everyone who signs up for Voice will get an EOS account – users could stake Voice tokens to move their comment to the top of a chain of comments. If someone staked more tokens than the current top staker, then the first user would get their Voice Tokens back and then some – staked Voice Tokens.
Signups for Voice beta access are now open at Voice.com.
“We can’t wait to see what people will do with it,” Larimer said.
What do you think? We know Facebook plans on doing things for their crypto ambitions – but is Facebook, with its limitless ability to censor, something we, crypto users, should support? Will you sign up for Voice? Hopefully they won’t geo-block like some companies! Let us know on our Facebook Page!
