908 days on farcaster. on may 5, 2024, i had zero followers here. today, more than 8,000 people know me. it started with warpcast. dwr’s founder vision, new experiments, and then warpcast becoming farcaster. i saw degen airdrops, moxie, hunt, tips, random tokens, a few nfts, two power badges, channel changes, and moderation waves. then social token, monad, and zora claims. i didn’t put much money in. but i did put in time, attention, consistency, and belief. the financial wins were not huge. but the experience was. then came rish’s phase: mini apps, planning, and token launches. and now network school. for a long time, farcaster felt like a vacation. new people, new ideas, new experiments, new stories every day. now it feels different. the vacation is over. we’re back in school.

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How much more until someone says something? Your post will be nerfed if you tag banned users. 💔 Next they may tell you that you can't engage with your banned friends on other clients... Are you gonna be okay with that? Will you say something or just accept it because you're scared of being banned? cc @pichi

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And more from your favorite dictators Announcements via private elite group chats https://x.com/cryptostatuette/status/2115582692037390361?s=46

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GM farcaster claims they are a show that supports builders and that they have stayed neutral in regards to many builders and active community members being banned from this app. But the facade of neutrality is insulting. @nounishprof and @adrienne are only interested in praising @balajis.eth methods. They have become a mouth piece for the propaganda machine. I think it’s sad that these two people have made their whole digital existence about spreading propaganda for VCs and corporations. @gmfarcaster will never be a successful show and it will never truly support builders when all they care about is propping themselves up and kissing the asses of those they think can further their position.

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i don’t want to start another debate here, but i do want to say where i’m coming from. i can understand why some people see value in the direction balajis is pointing toward. communities do need order, and hard calls are sometimes part of that. at the same time, some people who are no longer part of the daily conversation here had their own point of view too. i don’t think that should be erased from the story. support and criticism both have a place in any community that’s still alive. bad-faith criticism can wear people down, but fair criticism is often how a community corrects itself. so yes, moderation matters. but moderation shouldn’t only show up in conversations, it should show up in decisions too. if a decision affects people deeply, there should be enough room to revisit it when a second look is needed.

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Listening back to the @gmfarcaster episode of yesterday. Not quite finsihed yet, and there's a lot to say about this. Maybe I will try and find some time to gather thoughts and craft them into a longer piece. Maybe I shouldn't for my own sanity's sake. I want to first say that I have a lot of love for @nounishprof and @adrienne for what they've built in the past year. Not just with their show, but also with contributions to shaping the Farcaster community as it was when season 3 ended. And granted, I've only come to the part where they are talking about the 1h45 minutes mark, so maybe further down there's a bit of push back. I just have to say, I am very disappointed. @balajis.eth discredits everything we've built after the "sure best email" days. Sure there were terms and conditions, but after that, we've built a culture of open debate. What grew out of the scenius. We've spent a few years building on that culture of public discourse with disagreements, sometimes heated conversations. We've put real energy into basically enhancing the terms and conditions of use with that, only for it to be dismissed out of hand by saying the retroactive bans were simply moderation debt. Without any criticism from the two hosts of the show, who contributed to that enhancement, so whose work of years was also dismissed out of hand. And I know some of the people who have been banned from the main client. Who were the victims of this so called "moderation debt" collection. None of them were even close to being face tatted El Salvadorian gang members nor their supporters. Sure you can play with numbers, but some of them were amongst the most active users. Again, I have a lot of love for prof and Adrienne, for what they've built here in the past. And I have, with the small means I have, supported them from almost the start. But dear ladies, just accepting this without pushback, even acknowledging that all that work we did on shaping the culture of how we interacted here had no value whatsoever, because it was only good here in the "sure best email days", that I find disappointing. As if our contributions were only bad, and had no meaning at all. Sure, some of the "gang members from El Salvador" had a rough edge, but does that make them crazy drug addicts? And even that. The most humane (and cheap) way to deal with the crazy drug addicts is not removing them from society and locking them up, but helping them get better. We were once humane, here. This part makes me fear we have completely lost that humanity now. It hurts. Hard. It cuts. Deep. Very deep. It makes me cry. Is this what we've come to. Just dismissing some of the people who gave this place a bit of colour? There was no moderation debt. There was a reality based on the terms and conditions, but reinterpreted over years of interacting on the platform. I loved the edgy part of the early days of GM Farcaster. When we had fun in the chat on unlonely. I loved how we all shaped the culture on Farcaster since then. I am sad that some people I consider friends and people I looked up to, think that has no value. And I'm very sad that this community has such a deep rift now. Because I think the Farcaster community included everyone. Also the banned users. Also the edgy users. Also the users who see the positive sides of the NS take over. And over the years, many users have left this place. Not just because of the way people converse here. Also because of the Faristocracy, because of the feeling of not being seen. Because the free money dried up. Because of many reasons. Not because the culture was bad here. That never was the case. If anybody wants to paint me as a supporter of violent gang members now, feel free. That says more about you than about me.

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Do you remember that photo from about a decade back. It was turning the internet upside down. It was an photo of a dress. A striped dress, to be precise. It would be shared with one simple question: what colours does this dress have? Well, take a look at the picture and decide for yourself. You will see it's white and gold, or that it's blue and black. What is happening here  is a strange phenomenon. The photo is a bit of low quality. The dress itself is in a shadow, the rest of the photo is maybe over-exposed. What this means is that the photo does not contain enough visual information to get an accurate read of it into our brain. There's information missing. Our brains will not signal to us that this is the case. It simply fills in the blanks, based on our experience.  (1/4)

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Beautifully said: " Farcaster was a cozy place where we strange souls gathered to be ourselves." And it still is. There's just one client that does not show all of us. And that's fine. We need someone who can help leonor. Maybe our friends in Argentina? @leaolmos.eth for example?

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A social network only works if there’s a diverse audience with different opinions. What exactly are you going to build when there’s no demographic left to build for?

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1. I have thoughts, but I’m touching deer today so can’t long post 2. I’m always here for experimentation and know that Farcaster needed something crazy to reinvigorate it 3. I joined because I got banned from Twitter for talking about a certain subject. It’s why I feel in love with the protocol. I loved the idea of uncensored free speech. 4. Bans that are retroactive based on imaginary rules that you don’t know you are breaking are not cool and I will die on this hill. It’s the very opposite of an open protocol. 5. I now have to censor every word o type. I rewrote this 4 times in hopes that whatever magical algorithm is watching me now doesn’t flag me. I can’t be myself. I can’t speak freely. I think I am back in the shadows, but this time by choice.

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Interesting question. But what is it really. A good functioning connection where needed, and maybe connection-free reserves where wanted? What do you think, Farcaster?

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This is so cool! Thank you @namrufretep for giving up your well-deserved art earnings to contribute to the fight against cancer. You are amazing, my friend!

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Hurray! Every contribution matters, every contribution counts. I am so enormously touched by everyone showing up for this. You have no idea how much you all are motivating me, pushing me higher. And how incredibly proud it makes me to be part of this community. Farcasters are amazing.

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This. Exactly this. Well said, Kenji.

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New friend alert. Please welcome and help get started.

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