With existing social media platforms increasingly coming under fire for alleged censorship, decentralization proponents may now be one step closer to another blockchain-based alternative that says it will “take social back from big tech.”
Block.one, the company behind EOS, is now targeting an initial launch of their new social media platform Voice on July 4, the Independence Day in the United States. However, users will still need to go through registration in order to publish and engage with content, and this will remain by request only until August 15, Voice CEO Salah Zalatimo tweeted this weekend.
The new launch date marks a change from a previously planned launch sometime this fall, and – according to the company’s CEO – happens because they “simply can’t wait any longer” given the big tech companies’ increasing control over user data and content on their platforms.
Probably playing it safe as they are walking unchartered waters. Don’t want the entire system to crash if tens of thousands join at the same time.
— Franco Mocke (@FrancoMocke) June 6, 2020
The decentralized social media platform, which launched its beta version back in February, aims to be an alternative to existing social media networks by putting an emphasis on having only real human users on its platform, thus hoping to avoid spam, fake users, and misleading content. Further, the platform will feature its own utility token that can be earned as rewards for creating posts, or be spent to boost the visibility of posts.
Block.one has invested heavily in the new social network. As reported, the company last year paid USD 30 million for the Voice.com domain. Earlier this year, the company also announced an additional investment of USD 150 million in capital to kickstart Voice.
The new platform was originally designed to operate on the EOS public blockchain, but later changed this to the purpose-made EOSIO blockchain.
At pixel time (07:20 UTC), EOS, ranked 9th by market capitalization, trades at USD 2.8 and is down by 0.6% in a day, trimming its weekly gains to 3.4%. The is price is almost unchanted in a month and down by 56% in a year.
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