First Draft Club

Are Channels Still the Future of Farcaster? (🧵)

I used to think so. Now? Not so sure.

Back in April 2024, spam was everyone’s problem on Farcaster. Then the channel overhaul happened and shifted the spam burden to hosts. If your channel is full of spam, it’s on you: Gate better. Moderate harder. Ban faster. 

It’s exhausting and most channel hosts have ignored it or automated it, confusing new folks and aggravating old ones who can’t cast into channels freely. 

Fast forward to April 2025: spammers got smarter. The current model aggressively flags most users as low-value. 80% of casts are orphaned—no replies, no recasts, no likes. Worse, casting into channels doesn’t trigger spam labels, which flipped the whole dynamic and spammers gravitate to casting into some channels hoping for visibility.

These are my questions for all of you: 

	•	To gate or not to gate?
	•	Is anyone even posting in channels?
	•	Does anyone scroll them?
	•	Are channels just for farmers (and not the FarmVille kind)?
	•	Can a community survive on a single pinned cast?

parksrec

Pi-chi.eth (she/her) Artist /animeoutcasts
Hosting: /sakura /kyoto /momiji  /anime-manga /farcasterunion

https://portrait.so/pichi

Gatekeep all the way. Frustrating having to get accepted into some channels but I don’t mind. Some folks still don’t follow channel rules and cast whatever they want, some have been legit scammers. We had to eliminate folks from the /dv /parksrec channel. We’ve let everyone join but some cast constant spam and or things that don’t fit the channel. 
I see pros and cons for channels but at this point I’d rather keep them. ;);)