For a long time now i have been a critic of wasteful spending of funds in the crypto space (and on HIVE) on worthless development and fluff.
Paying devs to build shit no one needs that in no way forwards the ecosystem just so fools will get hyped and throw money at a token, leads to stagnation of the whole ecosystem.
HIVE in a small way suffers from the same thing with its DAO but Voice could be seen as the pinnacle of wasteful spending and useless development.
According to some news i picked up (i cant verify how true it is) Block.one payed 30 million USD just for the Voice.com domain and 150 million USD in total for the development of the platform.
Why?
What is it that Voice solves? What does it improve? What does it change?
Nothing.
After looking at the claims made by Voice creators there is only one conclusion to make. And that is the conclusion from the start of this post.
They built Voice so devs could get payed.
So what is it that they claim Voice is supposed to do?
Lets look at a few focuses of theirs.
Fake accounts.
What is a fake account? If someone created an account for some purpose, lets say to farm curation, to comment without exposing their identity, to shill, to troll or for whatever other reason... Does that make the account fake or does it simply make the account "anonymous".
When you have tools in place like downvotes and RCs which is the case on HIVE that can counter folks acting maliciously then you can in no way justify KYC and convince any remotely intelligent person by using the "fake account" narrative.Fake news.
The second focus here is the one most easily debunked. Suggesting that because you give your personal information and your real name to Voice.com that will somehow stop fake news is ABSOLUTE nonsense!
Ever heard of mainstream media? You can see everyones names there and that in no way stops #fakenews. You can see their faces and you can hear them speak lies, twist the truth to fit their agenda and deceive the public.
Voice.com claiming that they somehow will manage to stop or even obstruct "Fake news" (maybe they intend to censor based on their own ideology) is absurdity at its finestFake privacy?
I have no idea what they mean by this. How is the privacy you have on HIVE fake? On HIVE you can stay as private as you wish while Voice has no privacy at all. For everything public i have Facebook and thats a place where i will not share thoughts freely in this outrage and cancel culture. Ill keep my face and name there in case someone needs to contact me for work but will not use it in any other way. If i decide to be a public figure with the ideas i share anonymously, HIVE allows for that as well.
The difference is that i have a CHOICE!
Why would i need a place like Voice that forces me to do that to even use the platform?
Conclusion:
Voice is nothing more then a platform where you endanger your privacy, where the thought police can land and easily pick you off one by one, where you doxx yourself so you can write a few comments and posts.
Voice solves absolutely nothing they claim to attempt to solve. Why in the world would you doxx yourself then? Where is the payoff? For the price you pay where is the gain?
Is token tribalism that pervasive in your life and your love for EOS so strong that you jump down that well of your own free will?
Even their "ground rules" section leaves room for censorship from their side.
Their gimmick is silly and reminiscent of MINDS with additional steps and unnecessary complexity. Nothing revolutionary or special.
Voice does not fix fake news, does not fix fake accounts, does not fix censorship. It does not solve social media any more than Facebook does.
Its a 150 mil USD project that exists to feed the devs and for Dan to have something to satisfy his investors with.... for a while.
I see it being about as successful as MINDS. Which is fine i guess for a crypto social media project. Not for a 150 mil USD project though.