Farcaster

Hey all - just wanted to share some of my concerns about the public nature of our casts/behavior on FC.

Hoping for an open dialogue on where we think this is headed, and in the long run, how to provide privacy protections from a user content perspective.

https://paragraph.xyz/@barrycollier/farcaster-content-graph

This is the beauty of the protocol. 

It’s not meant for private conversations…but there’s also nothing stopping anyone from building an encryption-first client. 

All casts published from it are encrypted, need to use that client to read, etc.

IMO, we need better zk tooling for true onchain privacy.

leader • reader • taco eater • fly eagles fly • /whiskey • /nativefun • previously addepar, linkedin • https://nf.td/derek

Thanks, Derek

Therein lies the problem for me. I'm talking about at scale.

If FC's goal is to remain a niche social community, it's fine.

If FC's goal is 1B+ DAU, that will require a LOT of mainstream users who don't know better

We cannot abdicate privacy at scale and not expect it to have a severe impact

perpetual learner • curious builder • art lover | bazvault.eth | barrycollier.com | hosting /baz /givingflowers

It's a critically important conversation and I'm a huge advocate for onchain privacy (for tons of reasons & in many contexts), but the general lack of privacy in social media is a feature, not a bug.

It allows one to own a reputation and influence, which is why people congregate on social media networks to begin with.

Yeah, for sure. I mean this is possible on existing networks too, it's just WAY easier onchain, which I assume is what you're getting at. 

I personally chalk it up to "blessing and curse". That is, it's an amoral component of the protocol, and people will use it for both good and evil.

I'm in total agreement

My issue is more that any person can retrieve the entire network of data without any authentication

Maybe if we had the data grants at the client level, e.g., Warpcast, so that anyone using that client would be able view the data I approved for that client

But at the hub level, it's encrypted