Friend.tech Reverses Policy To Punish Users Who Use Rival SocialFi Projects

• Friend.tech plans to reward users who stay loyal and refrain from joining its forks or clones.
• The SocialFi project will automatically forfeit the points of users who choose to opt into its forked versions.
• The points are expected to have a special purpose on the tokenized social media platform.
• Friend.tech’s users expressed disappointment at the project’s decision to punish users by forfeiting points.

Friend.tech, the decentralized social media platform that has taken the web3 space by storm, announced a controversial policy earlier today, in light of copycat applications and forks. The SocialFi project stated that it would punish users who opt-in to rival SocialFi projects by disabling the reward point accumulation feature for them. However, the founder of the project reversed the controversial policy less than twelve hours after unveiling it.

Friend.tech To Forfeit Points Of Users Who Move To Clones

According to an announcement on X (formerly Twitter) earlier today, friend.tech stated that it would punish users who move to “forks and copies” by forfeiting their existing reward points and having them automatically opt out of earning any reward points in the future. 

Users who choose to venture onto rival SociaFi projects would still be able to use friend.tech, the tokenized social media platform clarified. The platform added that its latest reward point policy was in order to make sure that loyal users were rewarded fairly during its Beta stage. 

Friend.tech users took issue with its latest policy, with many expressing their disappointment and frustration. The majority of the crypto community agreed that users should be free to explore other projects without risking the rewards accumulated from their activities and contributions so far. 

Friend.tech’s pseudonymous developer, Racer, reversed the controversial reward point policy within hours of announcing it, following backlash from users and the broader crypto community. The developer apologized to the users, and urged them to explore other products.

I’ve been operating from fear…..That fear made me act with a mindset that is zero sum when i told you not to use other products….. Please live your life as you want.”

Racer, friend.tech developer

It is unclear as of now how users will be able to use the reward points in question, but the SocialFi project previously stated that they will have a “special purpose” once the six-month beta period ends. Friend.tech plans to distribute 100 million reward points throughout the Beta period, with airdrops every Friday. Airdrops consider user activity until Thursday 23:59, following which the points are rewarded and recorded off-chain.