No Voice on VOICE
VOICE is making huge waves, both on and off-chain arenas of social media. Most of these waves till now have been due to huge amounts of marketing and it remains to be seen whether this momentum can be sustained or not. The reality is that VOICE means little to a person who cannot actively participate in it. I mean sure, you can go and read some posts there but you can't voice your opinion on 'VOICE'. It seems that 99.999999% percent of the world's population doesn't have meaningful access to the platform, other than reading it like a newspaper that's been written by pseudo-journalists. Forget the rest of the world, even the crypto community itself has only a handful of individuals who have access to it. The sad part is that even after more than a year of making noise, nobody knows whether VOICE is on a blockchain or not.
Ah, and not to mention the fact that I can't have an account on VOICE because I am not from the right country..... so much for global decentralization. The problem is not the fact that VOICE platform is in beta, but rather the secretive nature. Nobody knows when people outside North America will be able to access it. I am from India, so I am probably not even on the wait-list.
I have been a part of the EOSIO ecosystem for more than two years now and have grown to love it, hate it, and love it again. Real relationships are always like that. There is so much that the devs and promoters have brought to the table - projects, ideas, apps, financial instruments, blockchain-based social media..... the list is practically endless. So why should I wait for VOICE when I have plenty of other options on EOSIO itself and even more beyond that. The way VOICE has been promoted has been nothing short of 'me Jesus, facebook antichrist' attitude. There is a thin line between evangelism and self-righteousness and the fact that I can't have this discourse on VOICE itself says a lot about where the platform stands at the moment. Maybe in six months, more people will be onboarded and it will diversify. Maybe in a year or a two, we Asians would be able to make an account too. But the fact is that as of now most of us have no voice on VOICE.
Some might find my opinions a bit scathing and I won't disagree with them. There are several things that worry me about VOICE and that's why I am bitching about it so. The first and foremost is my cautious nature as a cryptohead. I have known too many projects blown out of proportion, only to see them fizzle out at the end. Hell, I have seen great platforms being hijacked and turned into dust. My second gripe is that if the people are supposed to go to VOICE for their fair share of social media, then that will not happen for me. By the time I gain any meaningful access to the platform (read - when my account is approved), people would have already established their groups and cliques and I would arrive there like a prepubescent kid at an adult party. I saw the same thing happen on other platforms and I am not going to say that this time it will be any different unless it really is (which I can only know if I have an account there).
Let's just say that I stopped believing in 'hype' a long time ago and so did many others. Don't be surprised if you find me on VOICE a year from now, but it's just as likely that you won't see me there. It's a 50-50 and thus a game of chance. This is a game that I simply won't play. So I am going to do myself a favor and not talk and listen about VOICE anymore, at least not until I have had a chance to use it for myself.
(Image source: https://block.one/)