Looking for input

Assume we want to simplify channels to make them:

1. Fully decentralized, zero Farcaster app dependencies
2. Allow other clients to extend them
3. No cost to create them

Which option is most appealing?

A) Hashtag approach — channels are open to everyone, channel pages look less like profiles and instead are a simple feed of casts. There’s no moderation — the feed is unique to each viewer based on their own social graph and maybe a user-controlled setting around filtering. 

B) Niche interest approach — Channels are open to everyone and narrowcast only, ie you get no distribution boost. But allows you to cast in a channel knowing only people interested in that topic will see it.

Assume in both cases membership and moderation in the main Farcaster app would go away. PYou’d be free to use a channel focused client for more community features. 

This is not an imminent change, more gathering input for what matters to people who still use channels.

Second channels question

Again, looking for input. No imminent change. 

Assume a “yes” to the below makes it more likely that we unlock channel innovation in other apps and they are fully decentralized and that happens *a lot* sooner than alternatives.

Here’s the hypothetical:

1. We remove all the existing channel functionality from Farcaster app.

2. All old and future channel casts still appear in the app (ie FIP-2 casts today but we make them a bit nicer than they are now).

3. In order to cast in a channel you use a mini app or another client like Cura or Zapper.

Yes or No?

Having to use another app would kill channels. Being able to cast into a channel from any app would be preferred.

building /gmfarcaster network |
blockchain ENT prof |  ⌐◧-◧ Nouncillor, Nouner, BuilderDAO community resident /builder

The challenge is membership. Super messy to support cross app. Doable but a ton of work.

If no membership, then channels get overrun with spam.

What if it was simplified like dc group chats? Link to join controlled by the owner? And just 2 options (open to all; link to invite) rather than mod bots with multiple options? Or even - 1) open to all 2) open to mods only with owner setting the mods? 

Just spitballing. Seems like the spam problem only gets worse if it’s # type casting into channels.

Except with mod bots & other integrations—thought maybe that was the issue creating complexity. 

Is the problem membership gating at all? (In terms of it existing at a protocol level?)

Membership creates a massive new user problem.

Even if you improve the request flow in app people get upset.

Food

Travel

coinbasewallet

Cohost of /gmfarcaster, a live stream Farcaster news show.  Engineer. Mom x 3.

membership and moderation are the harder things in the current implementation. i think the challenge is this tension of big channels (like /food and /travel) being more like hashtags, while other smaller channels built intentionally by someone or a group of folks (mods/curators) needing active management. 

I think we can solve for this if we make it super easy to manage/curate a channel while still be able to discover its content or post in it across any app (farcaster app, base, cura, etc)

Yeah I get that —especially for broad topic channels. I’m mixed on this — for my own channels, I want to curate and keep them more informational. It’s a super helpful tool for brands. I feel like a shift will hurt that use case. 

But for the broad topic channels ( /food /travel etc) as a user, I want to be able to cast in them. And I don’t want spam anywhere. 

I also do appreciate being able to easily link to channels and that the tags are visible reference even in other clients (like /coinbasewallet) 

Yup — I’m sure that was really helpful since I’m all over the place lol and I’m sure I’ll be having this convo with @adrienne tomorrow