the new channels remove the little accessibility warp once had for the everyday user 
 
as a new user, i can no longer join warp & simply cast in any topic of my interest…

now, on top of paying the registration fee, i must also (in most cases) pay a monthly channel subscription… 

no new users will deal with this; it was hard enough to get them past the $5 data fee 

the issues we’ve had with “cabals” & “it” crowds are now 10x more divisive & exclusionary & immediately work against new users

on top of these channel subscriptions adding friction, they force you to pay (in many cases) the /owner/ of the channel via their hypersub

now this owner may or may not have any experience or expertise in the channels topic at hand

more likely than not, they were just the first ones to want to talk about it on warp - it’s just an interest… so why make these people god?

it doesn’t matter if it’s a minimal cost, new users won’t pay 10-15 individual subscriptions to access channels of interest

1. Agree it’s hard for new users! But it’s always been hard for new users. We’re going to be adding “onboard directly to a channel” when joining Farcaster as the next big project for channels.

2. Channels as hashtags / topics did not work. We iterated for a year trying to make it work.

3. So we’re trying a new direction that is more like public group chats with a feed UX.

4. A reminder that casting in your home feed like Twitter is available to everyone.

I agree it has always been hard but not this hard…

QR coin

Indeed, but don’t you think about some form of exploitation? If the channels were even based on fan tokens it’s a better use case than hypersub because that way your “ownership” always stays in your own wallet.

Hypersub is more akin to patreon. For those who already had hypersubs this provides an additional benefit we can share. Fan tokens come with speculation—that’s not always a good thing for creators especially because holders can be quite demanding. Also leads to spam. Very different use cases and expectations. 

And some channels will use free options. Most of this relates to limiting spam. From the channel owner perspective, the spam has been unrelenting and adds a lot of wasted time. Hopefully this will help with that.

In simple terms, I feel it would be better if the owner of a channel either approves membership manually or uses “fan tokens” because that way the user can always get their bucks back unlike hypersub. Might make new users feel safe