DeSo App friend.tech Faces Backlash for Penalizing Forks, Copies

The newest decentralized social media (DeSo) app for cryptocurrencies, friend.tech, has received harsh criticism for its decision to penalize users who opt into forks or counterfeit versions of its tokenized social media platform.

“To ensure that loyal users are duly rewarded during our beta, users moving to forks and copies will automatically opt out of earning points and forfeit their existing points,” the official friend.tech X account tweeted on August 28.

While Friend.tech did not mention any competitors by name, the number of X users in the response pointed to a new DeSo or “SocialFi” application called Shares, which is scheduled to go live in public beta on August 31.

Friend.tech has been airdropping “reward points” to its beta evaluators weekly for the past six months, totaling 100 million points.

The team has not yet disclosed what the points will be used for, stating only on August 15 that they “will serve a special purpose once the app reaches official release status.”

Some anticipate that it will transform into tokens for friend.tech’s governance, while others believe it may have some monetary significance for users.

Others believe that a future friend.tech native token airdrop will likely occur due to Paradigm’s pilot round investment.

The announcement made by Friend.tech was not well received by the crypto community.

Within the first hour after the announcement was posted, hundreds of negative comments and reposts criticized the app’s anti-competitive action.

In response to the announcement, CryptoKaleo, a pseudonymous trader, wrote, “Threatening or penalizing users for testing out other platforms goes against everything this industry stands for.”

“This is a prime example of how not to manage competition in Web3, lol. I can’t wait to read the apology in a few hours,” said a third individual.

Less than three weeks have passed since its public debut on August 11. Over the past few days, essential Friend.tech metrics such as activity, inflows, and volume have decreased.

According to data from Dune Analytics, Friend.tech transactions have decreased by more than 90% since its apex of nearly 525,000 transactions on August 21, with less than 50,000 cumulative transactions on August 28.