Varun Srinivasan pfp
Varun Srinivasan
@v
Some thoughts on spam on Farcaster and how we tackle it. First question - What is spam? The naive answer is "automated activity" but this isn't right. Over 75% of spam we find comes from real humans who have phones, wallets and x accounts. The best definition is "inauthentic activity". It's that feeling you get when you realize that someone who is following, liking or replying to is doing it to benefit themselves and not because they're interested in you.
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Varun Srinivasan pfp
Varun Srinivasan
@v
Spam is driven by people who want to get airdrops. How much can you earn if you set up a fake account on Twitter? Probably not a whole lot and not in directly measurable dollars. If you do the same on Farcaster, you might earn 10 or even a 100 dollars in airdrops. Spammers on Farcaster are very, very motivated. We see patterns like LLM spamming before they become commonplace on larger networks like X.
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Maretus pfp
Maretus
@maretus
Thanks for the comprehensive breakdown. Really interesting to learn about the different levels. Are level 0 people placed in ‘see more replies’ until you can get a sense of their account? Like a sandbox?
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Nicholas Charriere pfp
Nicholas Charriere
@pushix
Thanks for sharing, very interesting and clear
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Tayyab - d/acc pfp
Tayyab - d/acc
@tayyab
Will you teach when you retire? I think you have a calling here.
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will pfp
will
@w
imo “unwanted activity”
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iSpeakNerd 🧙‍♂️ pfp
iSpeakNerd 🧙‍♂️
@ispeaknerd.eth
Great thread, thanks for sharing! random forest is decision tree with learned weighting for different factors? inauthentic engagement is abusive of the commons, engaging with mal intent, imagine similar in relationships deceptively love bombing and emotional manip to get sex
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Mikado pfp
Mikado
@mikadoe.eth
Q: There's a lot of rumors about not tagging people. People say don't tag more than 3,4 per cast. Would be nice to be clear about that. Fwiw I think akshaan has done a fantastic job. The good it does outweighs the mistakes it makes. I compare farquest notifications with Warpcast and think I'd have gone crazy if it weren't for Warpcast's protection.
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Haole pfp
Haole
@haole
Thank you for this! Very helpful!
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mvr 🐹 pfp
mvr 🐹
@mvr
Nice insights, thanks for sharing! Are the levels introduced recently? If not I'm trying to understand how I got to level 3 without going through level 2 first, while I had the deprecated PB I lost everything from one day to the other. I don't think almost all people disliked me suddenly
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Pia pfp
Pia
@mrpiano.eth
I am a real user, but if I stop posting or interact less, the system treats me like a spammer, hides me, and makes me invisible, while other users who don't contribute much are visible simply because they've been on the platform longer. On Twitter, I always come back and feel heard. We, as programmers, are here to design, create, and bring ideas to life; we shouldn’t be the ones making these decisions. That's what SEO and marketing experts with innovative ideas are for—to improve the experience and retain real users.
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Rafaello pfp
Rafaello
@rafaello12
This was properly defined
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Shaya pfp
Shaya
@shaya
We see the efforts the team puts in to make this place better for all of us. Please don’t label me as spam.. it feels like my casts don’t have the reach they used to. Are users punished for not being obsessed with this app? I took a few days off and feels like that really hurt me here..
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pelasti.base.eth pfp
pelasti.base.eth
@pelasti
I could be a spammer
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Breck Yunits pfp
Breck Yunits
@breck
I think this analysis is flawed at the root.
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AusaR🎩 pfp
AusaR🎩
@ausar
Thank you, mr. V. I personally feel like i've learned a lot from this cast. Now what remains to be done by the community is a "check spam level" action. 😅
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Pent pfp
Pent
@sirpent
spam is anything that I don't want to see, so any spam filter will need to account for the individual
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antaur pfp
antaur
@antaur.eth
I am so please to read all of that. I 100% agree that there is no point to agressively scale bf this problem has been ironed out more. We don't need any vanity metric here to create the better internet our hearts and minds know is possible 💜
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↑Dom pfp
↑Dom
@onchaindom.eth
Do you think this is a fundamental problem for crypto social and is it even solvable with reasonable trade-offs?
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Yatima pfp
Yatima
@yatima
Interesting reading, thanks for sharing! I understand that the LLM analyzes casts using their text, but I wonder how it reacts to casts where the main content is images or videos, something common among artists. Do you have any advice to avoid being mistakenly tagged as a spammer in such cases, or is it irrelevant? Thanks in advance!
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