"Merkle just helps its friends"

How many times do I have to repeat that most users and developers on Farcaster did not know Varun or myself prior to joining Farcaster.

And in some cases have *become* friends because they stuck around early on when no one else cared. We've spent years with this people socializing on this social network. :)

Don't conflate something that's earned / built with cronyism.

You have been very kind in sharing my work and it means the world to me. 

I think where many people are coming from is the fact that there was a autofollow list. It appeared as though you were helping friends. I get the genuine need for it for retention and such, but the perception was that it was helping your friends. 

I really appreciate all of the new updates and AB tests around all this. Just trying to give a perspective of a smaller account.

Creator of /sands-of-sumaii - the Farcaster MMORPG | Game Designer at @game7

For what it’s worth, I think you and the team did really well explaining your view point on it all. 

I can’t speak for the retention data, but the perception has been fixed with being willing to test a different option.

Not sure if you ever saw it, but I made the autofollow dashboard. Made me feel really good that I could put in effort with open data that could change Farcaster. In fact, that was the first web3 project I ever worked on (I joined FC like 1 month before that). 

Long story short, the whole experience of using open data to suggest changes to FC and then you all taking that to implement changes makes me very very optimistic about FC!!

> I think where many people are coming from is the fact that there was a autofollow list. It appeared as though you were helping friends. I get the genuine need for it for retention and such, but the perception was that it was helping your friends. 

We were trying to get new users to stick around by having them follow the best people on the network (most of whom I did not know before they joined the network).