The spam filtering dilemma

Sharing how we think about it so people can better understand:

1. Most people will only use social networks if they are fun

2. Casting something and getting dozens of spammy replies is not fun

3. If you get enough spammy replies, you'll just stop using the app

4. So, aggressively filtering for spam is necessary to keep your existing users happy

5. However, this means some good new users will hit spam filters. Understatement: this is a bad user experience for those people. It would be great to not have this happen.

6. But given the choice of who to make unhappy — an existing user who has invested a ton of time and energy into the network or a new user that is most likely to churn (top tier social networks lose 50% of users!), then you have to optimize for your existing users.

7. So does that mean you don’t care about new users? No! It’s existential to have new users be able to join Farcaster and find people to connect with — without being labeled as spam.

1/2

That's a well-reasoned breakdown of the dilemma between balancing user experience for existing and new users, especially in a decentralized social network like Farcaster. It emphasizes the difficult trade-off between maintaining a fun, spam-free environment for loyal users while ensuring that new users don't face an unnecessarily harsh introduction to the platform.

In particular, points 6 and 7 raise a crucial challenge: protecting the experience of long-term users who are deeply invested while still nurturing new user growth. It makes sense to optimize for existing users to preserve the network's integrity, but it also highlights the importance of building a more nuanced spam-filtering mechanism to avoid discouraging potential new members.

Is there a way to improve the system over time? For example, could machine learning or better community moderation help refine the spam filters, ensuring fewer false positives while still being effective?

Looking forward to part 2 of your thoughts!