I posted on Voice for half a month and I was afraid of being banned for no reason

The opportunity to socialize is so tempting that even though Facebook and WeChat have become the norm in modern times, every year, new products with related concepts are discussed in the market after another.

Under the shadow of the giant, many products have tried to make breakthroughs from the perspectives of geographical location matching, strangers' social contact, picture social contact, interest community, etc. Fortunately, there are douyin and Kuaishou that have already established a firm foothold. Fortunately, there are last year's flash flash, toilet MT and Chatbot.

Daniel Larimar, founder of EOS, also has a social dream. He wants Voice, a social media platform based on the EOS blockchain, to "change the industry landscape". But the $150m project, which has been in development for more than a year, does not seem to offer much hope of disrupting the landscape. On the contrary, many players who have passed the various levels and successfully registered Voice were accidentally judged to be the Wool Party and suffered a gag ban for "inexplicably" reasons.

Voice: A high-threshold, low-profile version of Twitter?

In July of this year, Voice officially announced the launch of the US Apple store, since the public beta is only available to US users, many Chinese players who can't wait for EOS to use the "scientific" method to try to hide their nationality and identity to become a Voice.

But judging from what's being discussed on the social platform, Voice, a decentralized content platform that's been in the works for more than a year, doesn't seem to be living up to users' expectations. One person joked on Weibo that his face recognition picture was automatically set as an avatar when he registered, "can't bear to look at it directly". Others found Voice functionally inadequate, like an "under-featured" version of Twitter. More of the Voice for no reason to ban, seal helpless.

I've been BlockBeats for half a month, and I've found that if you're here to post something serious, it's basically hard to get more exposure without the help of your friends, and if you're here to gather the wool, it's basically impossible. Because once your thumb up, comments and other operations beyond the normal frequency, are likely to be lurking in the shadows of the official target, caught off guard will be banned yellow card, or even permanent ban.

Voice USES an invitation-only system, and each successful Voice player has the opportunity to invite 10 friends. At first, the invitation code wasn't easy to get, and when you thought it was a failure, the official email arrived two days later -- Lulu tried to retrieve the account via email, and again it took several days to get a confirmation email.

Anyway, I got my ticket to Voice. Because Voice is not open to Chinese users, if it is an iPhone, the app market can download and install it directly. But if you are using Android, you have to download an APK Combo for the installer, and then parse the downloaded Voice Combo file through the app, which is a tedious process.

After the installation of the application, the verification code received before will come into use. The whole registration process requires scientific Internet access, change the territory to the United States, successfully complete the setting of account name and user name, and remember the secret key.

Screenshot source: Starteos

In addition, the registration is also required to go through the "face recognition" process. In a previous email sent to users, Voice mentioned that it will use HooYu as KYC tool. According to the process provided by HooYu, users will need their mobile phone number, Twitter/Facebook/Instagram/Google and other social accounts, selfies, driver's license/ID card and other information to finally confirm their real identity. But in terms of the final operation, this information is not needed.    

It is important to note that facial recognition images are default to avatars and cannot be modified later. You can probably imagine what it would be like to have a bunch of completely real, unflattering self-portraits on the same page. In addition to accounts and avatars, users' nicknames and posts can't be modified or deleted at present -- but posts can be deleted by themselves. Some have speculated that Voice is the content that is not chained, but the hash of the content that is stored on the chain, or the content that is chained, modified and packaged into a new block.

You can become a Voicer when you have memorized all the information. But so far, the official team seems to have no plan to support the content, without some "clever", it is not easy.

"I suspect the authorities are targeting Chinese users specifically"

Although Voice is not officially open to Chinese users, the move didn't faze Chinese friends. In June, Voice CEO Salah Zalatimo announced that Voice would launch a public beta in July, and KOL like Zi Cen and Jing Kai soon became the first to test the waters. Interestingly, faces with the word "EOS" in their nicknames look familiar when searched in the search box.

As you can see from the introduction above, Voice itself does not have a low registration threshold. Basically, there are three main types of Voicer players who can overcome all the obstacles to becoming Voicer: first, players who are EOS believers and simply want to "try something new"; The second is the Wool party who want to take advantage of the Voice bonus period to explore profit opportunities, and the third is the enthusiastic crowd for the purpose of watching.

Li Yan is a member of the Wool Party. Originally thought that the platform could enjoy dividends in the early days, but the actual operation found that it was not easy to pull up the wool. Due to the complete uncertainty of the official incentive mechanism, li yan can only through thumb up, Voice it his own posts, plus frequent messages to others thumb up, several familiar friends to increase the "possibility" of income.

This blind, primitive approach did not go well.

Mr Li's most direct observation was that Voice was not friendly to Chinese people. "If you look at The top Voicer, there are hardly any faces that look Chinese." "The first one was for two days, and the second one was just received yesterday. I'm not sure how long it will last, because I guess thumb up operates too often."

No official explanation has been given for such behaviour, which can only be generalized to the systematic categorisation of the "suspected Wool party". But there is no official definition of the Woollen Party, and players have no control over that. Hearing that being banned three times will result in a permanent ban, Li Yan is now in a state of fear, "afraid of being banned". If Voice lost its appeal to pull up the wool, he admits, he didn't think of a reason to keep playing. "People have so many apps on their phones, why bother with one?"

According to BM and the Voice website, Voice is a Twitter-like social application based on the EOS network. Users who post content on Voice and get interaction with others can get Voice token reward, and they can also interact with others with token. The circulation mode of token reward supports the ecology of the whole application.

But in fact, since Voice made its public debut at the EOS developer conference in Washington in June 2019, progress has been slow. Just from the experience of ordinary users, the whole application is still in a relatively elementary state at present.

In April, Voice CEO Salah Zalatimo said in an interview that officials planned a year of testing, revealing that a full Version of Voice could be released in 2021. With such a long-term plan, app updates should be frequent in this phase, but judging from official Twitter messages and user feedback, there have been few bug-fixing and iteration messages from Voice since its launch. Are you officially happy with the current version?

If a cumbersome registration processes for can comfort themselves as "official party" in order to effectively curb wool, but the reality is that android users spend big strength to download the mobile terminal of the APP, in addition to simple functions such as browsing, thumb up, comments, now can not use platform at the core of "Voice it" function, have the android player even joked: "download only" registered "a Voice of the APP features."

In addition, although the APP has corresponding functions, even the "forward" function within the site is not yet open. If you want to try it, you will receive 100% of the warm tips in the screenshot below, while the off-site sharing function is actually a copy of the link. In response, Voicer zealously suggested that you could log in with the Google browser to use such features.

Click the function in the APP that has not been launched, and you will receive the above tips

In addition to the single functionality of the product, the entire background editor is also very rudimentary. The background editor and front page of Voice look like this:

Screenshot: Voice

Can you imagine, without telling you, that this is the product of a team that has raised $150 million in funding and honed it over a year?

Reasons why users need Voice

Voice had high hopes among EOS believers after DApp's popularity waned in 2018.

The app's vision, which promises to bring authenticity back to the digital world, is ambitious. In fact, the public has been questioning Voice ever since it was introduced. Voice wasn't fairly written off before it went live, but judging from the current open product pages, it seems even EOS currency holders have a hard time finding a reason to cheer for it, not to mention the crowd.

A good content platform is one that makes people more "relaxed" linking to good content. When it comes to clear positioning, Voice doesn't have the unique 'one-click face change' feature that makes it a social magnet like the ZAO, nor does it delve deeper into audio social areas like the Clubhouse to gain a minority of followers. Whether or not an official programme of content promotion brings in a cadre of cultural, political and sporting opinion leaders, at least for now, the occasional gag rule or permanent ban has deterred some ordinary people.

The official attempt to create a world with "no robots at all" and full of real people seems to be beautiful, but it seems unrealistic. Even the accounts registered by real people are likely to be a group of users who only want to browse, thumb up and comment without Posting. Voice's current FOMO approach to paying for top billing doesn't seem to be so impressive that it's willing to switch from its platform to Voice.

In fact, successful social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Twitter don't raise hundreds of millions of dollars while Voice is still in Beta. More than a year later, the Voice of the team with the money doesn't seem as good as the product of the average startup team.

A user teased the Voice development team to Rhythm BlockBeats

It's reminiscent of the Baiteng car, where 300 people ate 50 million yuan of snacks, sold thousands of business CARDS, burned 8.4 billion yuan and left behind a pile of chicken feathers.

After seeing that even if the depth of the long also only a few thumb up, I decided to try the "shortcut." Just grab a couple of food and scenery shots from the free hd photo gallery and send them with a caption each day to the health section. As it turns out, the hack really did work: a bland image not only broke the record for rewards since the Posting, but also received a message from a suspected real user wanting to share the recipe.  

Social networking brush quantity, false number, water army, already let the user repeatedly, but people always have the need of social, if from facebook and weibo platform left, of course there will be a new option to choose from, and the Voice of is the banner of a "whole is reality", plus the tokens, incentive mechanism, if you, you can choose the function is incomplete, even the test takes more than a year of new platform?

At the request of the interviewees, the names in the article are pseudonyms

Welcome to join the official BlockBeats community:

Telegram Subscription Group: https://t.me/theblockbeats

Telegram Discussion Group: https://t.me/BlockBeats_App

Official Twitter Account: https://twitter.com/BlockBeatsAsia