Optimizing for Tolerance; a social network built on EOS

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  A process chart that outlines the pairing of anonymous users and proposed methods to incentivize for lasting, positive engagement.

Inspiration

The inspiration for this platform originated with the gradual understanding and awareness of how powerful a social network is when paired with a token economy. I was introduced to Steemit in 2016, and of course, I onboarded dozens of friends in turn. What captured my imagination was realizing that user behavior, in this case being able to make others money with upvotes, was a result of incentivizing altruism. During this time especially, legacy platforms like Facebook were cesspools at the peak of their virulency. Steemit offered an alternative that, at least for a time, had potential to solve not only censorship and transparency concerns, but some of the darker sides of human behavior more broadly. To this day, I'm still a regular contributor on the Hive network.

The seed for this concept began around 2018 when Voice was announced on EOS. I anticipated a similar experience to Steemit, but with the financial resources to finally take a Web3 platform mainstream. The investment in Voice promised so much, but as the earliest days of the beta unfolded the platform languished with confusing, contradictory and often absent leadership. I frustratingly meandered trying Ono, a Chinese social network built on EOSIO, which also collapsed after months of posting and sweat equity.

I began to riff with a friend and previous engineer at Steemit, white boarding how a platform built on EOS could capture that same social good I initially experienced in 2016. The most obvious question was, what would be hoping to optimize for? During the time of these conversations, society was at a tipping point with unrest, protests, censorship, identity politics and the most toxic sociopolitical climate in a generation. It seemed that tolerance was needed most and with social networks not going away, an attempt to introduce a platform that fundamentally incentivized tolerance was necessary.

What it does

This social network would create accounts that initially abstract any and all identifiable information, even usernames and profile photos. Users would opt in, agree to terms [TBA] and be randomly assigned to 1:1 chat portals. Both users would have a kill switch that could end the conversation at any time. With anonymous introductions, it's assumed that the culture of initial discussion and social memes like, "What's your name?", would change through this process. Assuming the interaction isn't terminated by either user and an expectation for engagement within a 24 hour period was met, both participants would receive a payout in EOS.

As time and engagement milestones were met, payouts would increase exponentially while at the same time, revealing more of the user you're paired with. It is presumed that inevitably, paired users would face drastically different points of view as gender, ethnic, religious and socio-political biases were revealed. At the advanced milestones of this process, it is also assumed that engagement rewards would incentivize a willingness to continue mutual interaction, despite those biases, thus, optimizing for tolerance on an interpersonal level.

An Ideathon specific proposal

The concept for this social network has remained in stasis since 2018, developing and further iterating on napkins over lunches in Austin and Minneapolis. It has existed, I believe, to eventually be manifested here with this pitch in hopes that more capable product managers, developers and marketing professionals could one day realize the initial vision. For that reason, I've focused on what this network would do, rather that what it would look like or be called.

Built With

• blockchain
• eos