Stream of consciousness on channels

1. The overwhelming top complaint about the new channels is “I lost access” / “I can’t cast in the channels I used to”

2. The root of this is channels ran for a year as public topics / hashtags and we nudged people to cast in channels for a minor distribution boost.

3. When we launched channels last year, one of the fears was people wouldn’t cast in channels, since Twitter has tried versions of this and people were too used to casting on main / in the home timeline. 

4. Farcaster user behavior was more nascent / “plastic” / early adopters. So we ended up getting most people to cast in channels.

5. The other reality is most people want to maximize distribution. So telling them “channels = more distribution” is hard to unlearn, esp. if you’re more of a weekly active user.

Lost access to old channels disrupts user habits and expectations. Early adoption of channels pushed by distribution incentives. Difficulty unlearning perception of channels as distribution boost