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In a weird spot with Farcaster.
On one hand I love the permissionless network and what you can build with it. In the early days I loved the connections you could make with interesting, thoughtful people. In some ways this still exists, but not in the same way.
On the other hand, the need to grow and keep the network alive brings about all sorts of stuff I don’t care for. Yeah sure I could just not read it, try to unfollow, etc. But in the end the algo feed and rewards will suck you back in. They’re effective. I can’t say I like that feeling.
An even more interesting dichotomy is that social is what you make it, but up to a point. Farcaster is better equipped than most socials to build your own experience thanks to its network. I could build my own feed with the people I want to engage with. However that only works if the people I engage with stay on the platform. If they churn due to the network changes, then what’s the point? And what about new people? There’s so many great people joint each day and with a narrowed client it would be hard if not impossible to find them, especially if they’re the minority in the feed.
I know some have said the answer is onboarding more people who post interesting content, but then it becomes a chicken in the egg problem. Thoughtful people aren’t going to join if what they see is mostly garbage content. I do appreciate the efforts by Merkle to solve this problem by bringing their own “chickens” to hatch eggs, but it’s hard to say if it’s been effective. I could invite some normie friends who I know would be great users, but they won’t have the stamina to wade through what’s currently on the platform. I would much rather wait until more of this is solved than onboard a few of the only friends I have to watch them churn forever because they didn’t like seeing the word fappcaster or getting a token shoved in their face. That’s not normie social content at all.
Will clarify that I’m not looking to argue, as this is just an honest brain dump of someone who has put a fair bit of work into the platform. Idk if it resonates with anyone else, and I wish I had more solutions than problems, but it just feels like where Farcaster is at.
Few things I know for sure:
- I will define my own experience
- I will cast what I want to cast
- I will look for solutions because I care 23 replies
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