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

Good cast 
If you have free time, read it

Web3 enthusiast since 2021 / posting mostly at random