Farcaster

I used to think that bots on Farcaster were problematic because of spam, but it's bigger than that.

If I respond to a bot, I feel like an idiot who wasted his time building a connection with a ChatGPT wrapper. 

It makes me suspicious of new users, and I tend to respond primarily to people I already know. This means that it's harder for genuine new users to build relationships on the network.

It could be fine for social *media*, but it's bad for the social *network*. 

What would be the ways to mitigate that?

Give up. The old social contract is over and the bots are a part of life now.

culture

People will be furious at being given Turing Tests. NPC-othering will be used to justify cruelty. Bots will become more human feeling than most humans online. Bots will queer personhood.

Bots *can* be valuable actors in the network, but if they make people feel like there's no point interacting, then the network's value will crumble

The Farcaster formerly known as Kchamp. Books, beats, bodybuilding, bright ideas and beautiful things.

katherinechampagne.com 

Bots *can* be valuable actors in the network, but if they make people feel like there's no point interacting, then the network's value will crumble https://warpcast.com/nicholas/0x399b72ed

solidity & product & art. weekly crypto dev interviews @ web3galaxybrain.com. follow zora.co/nicholas

I went through this ages ago when I got tricked by Borodutch into being very vulnerable with his dumb bot. I seethed and coped and then realized no one was coming to fix it. No one did, the problem compounded and somehow I still show up and post. 

Reframe your opinion of value or get out of the public square — we made our proverbial beds with this permissionless system now we must lie in it. If you want verified humanity log off and go to church, or a book club, or just start your own private group chat.

Or Worldcoin. Or Opacity network (proof of several web2 accounts+history). I think if Merkle doesn't solve something like proof of humanity, everyone may log off eventually. X Premium is proof of credit card which is better than the nothing sandwich over here.

Agreed, but I think @dwr.eth will eventually acknowledge that, if the public (users and prospective users') perception of Farcaster is that it's 95% bots and 5% bot creators looking to dunk on you for your genuine interaction (social MEV searchers), then this network will die on the vine. There have been many "social networks of bots" projects and no one cares about them because they create no value and only extract precious time value from users. 

That doesn't mean zero bots allowed, but the psychological comfort to post amongst people you default to thinking of as people is prereq for cozy channel thesis. 

Bots are here to stay online in general, but I expect we'll see lots more heavy handed kyc-like gated spaces outside of crypto emerge to create human space online. Farcaster is in a scenario to be early/on-time to market with a solution, if Merkle chooses to take on the problem.

I'm sorry you got rugged by boro early. You were early to that historical plotline.

Proof of credit card does not solve bots. I have a Worldcoin ID no one uses that system. It looks like a token pump and dump. 

I don’t disagree with you but I also don’t think anyone actually cares outside of a handful of ethical nerds. No one will fix this until the consequences are fully manifest and it impacts the bottom line.