Farcaster

10K characters on social media is like adding a swimming pool to a motorcycle.

Technically impressive.  
Functionally useless.

Social media works because it’s short.  
Attention spans are short.  
The best content? Even shorter.

Nobody wakes up thinking: “I hope someone dumps a 7,000-word manifesto into my feed today.”

But here we are.

Since the feature exists, let’s use it — to explain why it shouldn’t exist.

---

Social media = speed.

Velocity of consumption.  
Velocity of interaction.  
Velocity of dopamine.

Long posts break the loop.

The feed slows. Replies dry up. Discovery dies. Virality collapses.

Every successful platform understands this.

- TikTok: seconds.
- Twitter: 280 characters.
- Threads: micro takes.
- Instagram: instant visuals.

The platforms that lost? They forgot constraint.

---

10K characters enable a dangerous lie:

"More words = more value."

No.

Compression is hard.  
Rambling is easy.

The moment you give people 10K characters, they start filling it. Not because they have 10K worth of insight — but because the space exists.

---

10K characters don’t just break feeds. They break conversations.

Who replies to a 5,000-word essay?  
Who quote-casts a 35-paragraph post?  
Who skims 78 lines before replying?

Nobody.

Social media thrives on atomic exchange:  
Idea → reaction → counter-reaction → meme → iteration.

Rapid cycles. Distributed thinking. Crowd-sourced refinement.

Monologues kill that.

---

10K characters fuel engagement farming.

Expect:
- AI-generated "insight dumps"
- SEO-optimized "value threads"
- Fake expertise
- LinkedIn-style virtue signaling
- Low-signal noise floods

We’ve seen this pattern on every platform that allowed bloat.

First it’s insightful essays.  
Then it’s "10 AI hacks you must know".  
Then it’s garbage.

---

Long posts also break discovery algorithms.

Algorithms love:
- Abundant data
- Fast engagement
- Quick signals

Long-form posts give:
- Fewer samples
- Slower reactions
- Skewed data

Eventually, the algo can’t tell what’s good — because everything becomes long, unread, and engagement-throttled.

Result: dead feeds.

---

Ironically, 10K characters make the writer feel productive.

"Look how much I wrote!"  
"Look how thoughtful I am!"  
"Look how nuanced!"

Reality:

- Audience disengages
- Message dilutes
- Value-per-word collapses

Writing more isn’t writing better.  
Writing clear is writing better.

---

The constraint *is* the feature.

You don’t make chess better by adding 400 pieces.  
You don’t make haikus better by removing syllable limits.  
You don’t make Twitter better with novels.

Constraint forces clarity.  
Constraint forces creativity.

Remove it, and quality collapses.

---

"But what if I want to write deep essays?"

Perfect.

Start a blog.  
Write on Substack.  
Link it in your cast.

Let the feed breathe.  
Let long-form live where it belongs.

---

Attention is a finite resource.

The battle for attention is zero-sum.

Every time one person floods the feed with 10K characters, 100 short, sharp, interesting conversations get buried.

More words don't mean more value.  
They mean less oxygen for everyone else.

---

If everyone uses 10K characters:

- Feeds become bloated
- Conversations stall
- Algorithms decay
- Readers scroll faster, not slower

The paradox of attention:  
The longer you write, the less they read.

---

Farcaster isn’t broken.

Short-form works.  
Atomic conversations work.  
Velocity works.

Don’t break what works.

---

And if you made it here, congratulations: you are now part of the 0.1% who just proved the problem.

10K characters wasted to explain why 10K characters are wasted.

Let’s keep social media social.

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My bad, there is actually a massive need for 10k char posts as highlighted by @dwr.eth 😂

My bad, there is actually a massive need for 10k char posts as highlighted by @dwr.eth 😂
https://farcaster.xyz/dwr.eth/0x99c0af32

Building Taplio & TweetHunter | Founder @anser-social.eth
https://anser.social | prev. Ledger

Minor optimization. Lower priority for now.

I don't believe in x-posting, but I know a lot of users request that.

Anyway, my initial post was more of a performance, I don't have strong feelings about 10k chars.

Might help with richer text ? 

T̲h̲i̲s̲ is a 𝘵𝘦𝘴𝘵 of 𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴

Most people won't use 10K characters.

But a lot of people from Twitter don't x-post since our lengths were much shorter.

TL;DR: The Spam Reaper is back with a vengeance aka 25% of my Good Followers got marked as Spam this week

➼ Follower numbers going crazy, down by a lot
➼ Rewards leaderboard scores are weird (probably points being removed because people are marked as spam)
➼ Overall engagement is down/strange
➼ Much confusion and people feel down on themselves and are taking it personally. Don’t. It’s not you.


——The Great Purge...Again——

Your follower counts are going down because the spam algorithm is very aggressive this week. When someone gets labeled as spammy, aka a “0” label, the Farcaster client no longer counts them in your follower count. They are still following you and you can see it on the protocol.


——-Spam Label Official Updates Aren't Updating——-


The spam data set hasn’t been updated in 11 days. We used to get an update every week on Thursday evenings. That cadence has been inconsistent since the beginning of May. Any frames that show your spam label are 11 days out of the date. The spam algorithm runs daily and people are re-labeled. But until the json file gets updated, we can’t see your true status. We are just guessing. If you are in “show more replies” inside of a channel, you might not have a spam label. The channel might be set to prioritize members replies. If you comment on a naked cast, aka one that’s not in a channel and you are in “show more replies” you probably have a spam label.

If you have a “0” spam label, you aren’t eligible for the Rewards Leaderboard. Your engagement also doesn’t count for others. So if your points have gone down, people either deleted their replies/undid a recast/like OR They got a spam label of "0" sometime this week and their engagement no longer counts so your points went down.


——-Engagement is Weird——-

Engagement is weird this week. The team is clearly tweaking the home feed algorithm and it’s starting to have effects. You can’t fight the home feed, but you can change your default feed to “following” and use that more and you can pick a few of your favorite channels and scroll them and interact to train the home feed to show you some more interesting things.

With @tipn  and @noiceapp  in play, some folks may be changing how they engage and liking, recasting, and commenting less or being more careful with their engagement since money in now attached. Just a theory but this could be a factor in why engagement feels different.
I don't think it's one single thing, but a multitude of factors converging all at once.


——-Vibes are Down, Let's Fix Them——-

I’ve seen many casts where folks are feeling down; feeling like they aren’t doing well because the metrics they can see are down. Don’t feel bad. It’s not you. It’s just how it is this week. You aren’t being ignored or mass unfollowed. It’s not personal, it’s just the algorithm. Don’t be so hard on yourself. If you show up here often, engage with people authentically, and show us your whole self, it will work out. It might be slow. It might not be measurable today, but consistency is key.


Since engagement is down, go out of your way to engage this week.

✷ Find one new person to follow
✷ Scroll a few well curated channels on topics and you like and say hi to some new people
✷ Respond to all authentic replies on your own casts
✷ Tag a friend into a conversation they may not have seen
✷ Use quote casts to elevate great content and share it with a new audience and add to the conversation, but be sure to give some engagement to the OC (original caster!)
✷ Reply more if you have the time. You could make someone’s whole week


——-Verifications are Coming——-

Be sure to have at least $25 in major tokens in your Farcaster wallet and do all the verifications you are comfortable doing. I don’t think the visibility changes have gone into place officially but they are coming. 

To be more visible you will need:
1. A good spam label (Level 2)
2. Multiple verifications
3. Money in your wallet
4. Engagement*


*engagement goes both ways. Be generous with your likes, recasts, and comments and people will engage back. And if they don't, why are you following them on a social network? Your attention is valuable!

https://paragraph.com/@pichi/25percent-of-my-good-followers-are-gone

I love it. 

https://farcaster.xyz/pichi/0x3aa4aa73