Steve on Warpcast

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https://warpcast.com/~/channel/hottakes

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Steve pfp

I've thought a lot about channels since they opened up to the public in late 2023. After various iterations, I now strongly believe channels should be entirely permissionless, as in: - no owner - no moderators - no fees Gatekeeping topics adds friction to the entire network. See /ai vs /aichannel vs /theai. Everyone wants to talk about AI but no one wants to curate or moderate these channels. Why would they? The rate of noise will only ever increase as automation improves, and Farcaster clients should be doing a lot of the noise filtering anyway. Curation happens with likes, recasts, and replies. The best posts already get picked by the algorithm feeds. With this framing channels become singular hashtags. No one likes hashtags because without limits they become #SEO #maxing #word #slop. A single label strongly signals the in the intent of the message. It also allows for easy mixing by quotecasting, e.g. /dont-do-this, /someone-build, etc. Channels as a label wouldn't work. So I propose: Contexts

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Steve pfp

Addendum: The namespace should also be simplified to just alphanumeric (just remove dashes). Existing casts can exist (until pruned) but a protocol change can prevent new casts from being in invalid contexts. Clients can (maybe should) use language heuristics to suggest an existing context for a cast as it's being drafted, so users can join a larger conversation without having to find it. Need a more tightly knit community/moderation? Make a group chat! Most casts will probably still be without contexts and that's totally fine. This is for casts looking to be part of a larger conversation.

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Garrett pfp

good take. i also think quote casts should default into the channel that the original cast was in.

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@ghostlinkz.eth

I think the "gatekeeping topics" framing is misleading. No one can stop you from casting about AI in the main feed or in another related channel that you are a member of. You can also start your own channel about any topic > The rate of noise will only ever increase as automation improve This makes human curation and moderation even more important > Farcaster clients should be doing a lot of the noise filtering anyway Have you ever tried building a Farcaster client? It's really hard to get a feed that is free of slop/spam. Even WC labeling system isn't the best. The only thing that works is creating user lists, which is what @recaster-fc offers > Curation happens with likes, recasts, and replies. The best posts already get picked by the algorithm feeds This doesn't work if most of the reactions are made by spam accounts. Without channels, you also end up missing hq content from newer/smaller accounts that the algos are not good at picking up

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studio whimsi pfp

is there a difference between this and old channel system we had (but without mods and owner)?

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Kenji pfp

I love your thinking outloud topics :D I've been thinking about user satisfaction, stickiness and Channel deterioration. Plz pardon my lengthy reply thread. From what I've seen there are largely 3 genres of users. 1 - the OGs/Builders, 2 - The socialites, 3 - the Diary Writers (I intentionally didn't include bots/farmers) Builders/OGs are native to Farcaster and will remain and continue no matter what the market situation is or engagement or whatnot. Their inner satisfaction is self-fed through innovation and construction. The Socialite is rather flakey and suffers from mental up and downswings, impacted by discoverability, engagement and the ability to monetize their attention. The Diary Writers, are the most stickiest users who login every day to write something regardless of engagement and have a routine pattern. It's ironic that these same types have the highest probability of being labelled as Spam due to lack of engagement despite their stickiness. Cont... 1

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Jacob pfp

i built a solution to this a while ago but it never got much traction channel feeds that are engagement-ranked + timebound, i.e. go to a channel and see casts sorted by most liked over a specific time period, and you can also change to different feeds (e.g. chron or trending) https://heyjoinatlas.com/channels

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Rodrigo Bardin pfp

as someone who has just built a (passion project) client that relies on channels as a source, good food for thought here. I wonder though how this would work on visual focused ones. Going extreme, about all sorts of graphic images or other nasty stuff. Maybe it is on the clients side, idk. I'd have to shut down in that case haha "Everyone wants to talk about AI but no one wants to curate or moderate these channels." Going back even to the forum days 20+ years ago, I've never seen a community thrive without a level of moderation. No shade, but owning a channel-like area in any corner of the internet is hard work and I'm not sure most people realises that - although tooling and UX for moderation also plays a role here imo.

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Tony D’Addeo pfp

feels about right not sure there is a strong enough use for them at this point maybe it helps develop subcultures like I like AI but this this specific brand of AI talk (aidoomerism) but also algos and follow grow already provide this and don’t require yet another thing for users to grok and di

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Punter 🎩 pfp

Tell this to Reddit 8 11 $degen

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BetSwirl pfp

100% agree ! well said !

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minimalist.degen

ya it deffo causes friction

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