Dan Romero on Warpcast

Dan Romero pfp

One thing I was wrong about over the last few years: sign up costs would dramatically reduce spam. Turns out spam is a top 3 problem (aside from retention and infrastructure scaling) to solve for when building a permissionless decentralized social networking protocol. Spammers are willing to pay for sign ups at prices that normal users aren't. Spam is also relative: what's spammy for one person is not for another. Corollary: when you talk to developers building on Farcaster, spam is a top of mind issue whereas users giving product feedback but not actively building in the ecosystem tend to think this isn't that big an issue / not that hard a problem to solve. Also a good proxy for the quality of first principles thinking when suggesting "why don't you just do this?" if you haven't considered how would spammers abuse this and what's the solution.

28 replies

6 recasts

122 reactions

HH pfp

whats the payoff for spammers?

3 replies

0 recast

3 reactions

Jawa pfp

Spam is a platform problem not an end user problem. It makes perfect sense that devs are more tuned into it than users. Solutions should also take this into consideration…

2 replies

0 recast

2 reactions

Ben 🟪 pfp

I wouldn’t be so hard on yourself. No, it hasn’t resulted in 0 “spam,” but I have to imagine it’s reduced farming by increasing the bar for the initial capital outlay required to farm. Counterfactuals are hard to prove. My suspicion is it would have been much worse with no registration fee. The new channel approach is a smart next experiment. It creates an additional “spam” filter, allowing users at the community level rather than the platform level to self-define “spam” and set an optimal entry fee to deter what they view as “spam.” IMHO, next step would be to equip communities to further sub-divide thereby adding more nuance to their own definitions of “spam.” I’m curious to see how it unfolds.

1 reply

0 recast

7 reactions

meta-david🎩 | Building Scoop3 pfp

meta-david🎩 | Building Scoop3

“What’s spammy for one person is not for another.” What do you personally classify as spam?

1 reply

0 recast

3 reactions

Commstark 🎩🫂 pfp

Commstark 🎩🫂

utilize users to remove spam" according to Travels In The Land of Kublai Khan (marco polo), Kublai Khan wanted to build sidewalks in his city he demanded that each person spend a day build sidewalks in front of their house and connect it with their neighbours in a weekend the entire city had sidewalks we can learn from this

1 reply

0 recast

1 reaction

rob.dimo pfp

What if we could use zktls to prove we’re who we say we are plus an ability to prioritize verified users in feeds and comments? @eulerlagrange.eth

2 replies

0 recast

1 reaction

Pia pfp

@dwr.eth When video game developers tried to combat piracy at all costs, they ended up creating systems so strict that they harmed legitimate users. Spam is an issue present on all social networks, but if we focus exclusively on it, we risk creating complex and less intuitive platforms. Since I've been on this platform, I haven't had any issues with bots or spammers; in fact, it seems like a fairly normal environment. The real problem I see here is the formation of mafias seeking to control everything, which I find much more dangerous.

2 replies

0 recast

0 reaction

Jason pfp

This is what I mean when I reference the sign up cost. Some of the larger platforms partially handle this with different forms of KYC, but that could be a dealbreaker depending on how it’s done

1 reply

0 recast

0 reaction

Greg Lang pfp

Interesting 🤔 If cost is not a deterrent, filters are probably the next most viable candidate solution How salient would you say the risk is that filtering is likely to sweep in a meaningful swath of genuinely non-spammy content? (E.g. on the other app, talking about crypto at all limits your reach)

1 reply

0 recast

0 reaction

𝖉𝖞𝖈𝖕¹ᵍ pfp

𝖉𝖞𝖈𝖕¹ᵍ

thank you for the insight. not all of us are able to really quanitfy how difficult your daily tasks are with the added stress of performing. a window like this into problems is helpful. goodluck and im enjoyin the process.

1 reply

0 recast

0 reaction

Joe Toledano pfp

Do you think y'all would ever add (optional) write-level filters for replies to a cast?

1 reply

0 recast

0 reaction

Tmophoto pfp

Do you think you would have spam if you hid all the moxie and degen stuff from the wc client? (It would have probably set back network growth a LOT in Feb -April) Moxie is hardened and armored from something like that but you know what I mean I think.

1 reply

0 recast

0 reaction

Daniel Fernandes pfp

Daniel Fernandes

Agree, I saw firsthand how Status.app's v1 product with public channels was completely ruined by spam. Made it a hard sell to recommend. The sign-up fee does prevent the kind of DDoS you might see if posting to a hub was free, but it doesn't stop the kind of ppl willing to pay for LLM botserver farms. The long term solution (without compromising on cypherpunk values and devolving back to Twillio phone KYC verif) is the social/reputation graph which takes years to build. Metcalf's law cuts both ways, each new valuable node increases the value of the network quadratically, and each user that churns due to spam/poor UX is a quadratic loss.

1 reply

0 recast

2 reactions

Pichi 🟪🍖🐹🎩 🍡🌸 pfp

Pichi 🟪🍖🐹🎩 🍡🌸

Anyone who was an Automod power user knows exactly what you were fighting on a daily basis. Warpcast moderation mode being the default on most channels hid the true problem from 80% of the users. I don’t envy you fighting that everyday. I don’t know what I would have done all summer without Automod.

1 reply

0 recast

2 reactions

mk pfp

I’d put an escrow behind quality users, and risk losing it if proven wrong.

0 reply

0 recast

1 reaction

↑ j4ck 🥶 icebreaker.xyz ↑ pfp

↑ j4ck 🥶 icebreaker.xyz ↑

ok banger lived insight

0 reply

0 recast

1 reaction

Zinger ↑ is job hunting pfp

Zinger ↑ is job hunting

Tough lesson but appreciate you sharing. Makes me more bullish on Farcaster knowing that Merkle and the entire ecosystem are working on combatting this problem now at the earlier stages given it will only get worse at tech improves.

0 reply

0 recast

1 reaction

Kaloh pfp

I think crypto spammers =\= non crypto spammers. Crypto spammers (and scammers) are more willing to pay than in other industries

0 reply

0 recast

1 reaction

pol pfp

In @cdixon.eth's book one of the benefits of decentralization is that other actors can actually help you fight spam and you don't have to solve it all with your organization. Have you seen this happening somehow? Or is it still too early / economically unsustainable / just wrong?

0 reply

0 recast

1 reaction