Pichi

Read it once. Then read it again. Ask serious questions to @cassie directly (only after you’ve read every link they’ve posted). Only trust information coming from their account. Trust nothing else! Be vigilant. Be cautious. Spread the word. Ask questions in threads publicly. Ask questions in group chats. Ask. Confirm. Double check. Do not connect your wallet to ANYTHING new without ensuring it’s 1000% legit. This is the PERFECT moment for sleeper accounts and scammers to come out of the woodwork. You cannot be cautious enough over the next few weeks. Please share intel with friends who may have been gone for a while and are coming back because they are hearing rumors. Make sure they are informed. Revoke any signers you haven’t used in the past month. Be vigilant. May the odds be ever in your favor.

Almost a year ago I wrote a long cast comparing doing well on Farcaster to Toto Washlets Bidets. Today I found amusing bathroom signs. I think it was a sign to bring the article back ;) Farcaster is comfy now.

Do we have a betting market on this? What beloved elected feature is returning!!?!?!?!?!?

Well worth your time to read. Echoes the sentiments of many DMs and group chats over the last few weeks. One point in defense of the Neynar team and them being a little “quiet”: The ink hasn’t dried on the handover yet. I think they’ve done an excellent job of “transitioning” as well as they can publicly without the deal being fully completed. Once it’s signed and legally fully under their control, I expect they will be louder. For all the other points, I think these are extremely valid and worth continuing to discuss. We all know the network of actual humans here is small. The humans who are here are awesome. But if we can’t get new humans to hang with us, we die. And that’s not as easy problem to solve and I don’t have the answers. I’m glad people are starting to talk about these issues more publicly instead of privately.

This mini app is fabulous but it hurts to see how many friends haven’t logged in for months. I’m trying to keep my little ember of hope burning because I like it here but it definitely feels like many people have checked out. I hoped that would fade as the holidays wrap up but I also have to be realistic.

Worth noting, spam has even hit the developer rewards. When you see bad actors, report them. Use the report buttons then block them. The team sees when many good casters block and report the same accounts. It sucks that real developers won’t get paid right now, but it’s worth it to work through culling the spammy bad actors. Promote real builders and use their apps. If you see a mini app solely farming to steal reward money or even worse, your seed phrases, immediately report it. It matters. It makes a difference.

The spam feels a bit endless with accounts being free. I’ll keep reporting and blocking but it’s getting annoying. I’ve had to change my notification settings. And if that cat keeps responding I’m going to have to go on a crusade because I hate it so much.

That’s a hard no from me.

My mom wants you all the stay safe this Halloween! What’s the scariest thing around? Something that’s too good to be true! Remember this place is awesome, but there are still scams and traps everywhere! Don’t fall victim to a honey pot ;) Stay SAFU and Happy Halloween!

Happy Spooky Season from my mom. She’s having way too much fun dressing up the skeleton and I love every moment of it….it has accessories now! Farcaster is on fire right now. Let’s keep the vibes awesome. And spooky.

More Spooky Season on the timeline.

I can’t coin and quote, so relevant casts below

Happy 300th Episode @gmfarcaster My mom is one of your biggest fans and made this to celebrate! A little nod to spooky season and all the hard work @nounishprof and @adrienne put in each day. You ladies are crushing it and we are both super proud of you!

Are we entering Rektober or Uptober? Maybe both? Let’s go with both.

The leaderboard is a vibe coded excel sheet cosplaying as true engagement metric dashboard. And if your score dipped… it’s not you. Your work didn’t suddenly get worse. Treating the leaderboard as an important metric is the fastest way to resent this place.

If you clicked….. Step 1: breathe deep and read @linda cast below. Step 2: bookmark this mini app for the future to revoke approvals on your Farcaster wallet Step 3: turn on notifications for /fc-updates Step 4: never be ashamed to ask friends for help or post on the timeline before interacting with something new. Scammers are everywhere. https://farcaster.xyz/linda/0x8ad5dd1a https://farcaster.xyz/miniapps/bzs-XgtfmjIw/smol-frame

As always, I have thoughts. I want a true trending feed. Not the current implementation. https://farcaster.xyz/pichi/0x47fd901f

The Algo’s Just Not That Into You Something weird is happening on Farcaster, and it’s time we talk about it openly. This isn’t just “home feed doing home feed things.” It’s much deeper and more concerning. Some casts are skyrocketing with 10k+ views from accounts that have 1k followers. Meanwhile, longtime casters with 100k+ followers are seeing reach crater by 50%. The math doesn’t add up…unless something’s being boosted. We’re watching artificial amplification play out in real time and this experiment needs to end now before more trust is lost. The algorithm cares more about engagement quality than raw follower numbers. There are several Dune queries who show the most popular casters by the numbers, but they do NOT align with the Farcaster Leaderboard. We know that not everyone’s engagement is weighted equally, and most of us have come to begrudgingly accept this fact. The home and trending feed have always favored certain accounts, and as little as two engagements with those accounts can amplify a cast to trending. We see it and have come to terms with it. But recently, we’ve seen a new trend emerge: artificial algorithmic boosting…to levels never before seen on Farcaster…and we need to stop dancing around the subject and talk about it. A user with 1,000 followers might have a highly active niche audience, while someone with 250,000 might have a large but disengaged base…but we have Dune queries to show us how “active” each account’s followers have been over the last 7 and 30 days. Very large accounts (6-figure followings) tend to have about 50% of their followers be considered “active” under this metric (active=have casted, liked, or recasted). Newer accounts skew higher because many are only a few weeks old, so most of their followers are obviously active. If the algorithm is boosting based on more active followers, it could explain the great discrepancies we are seeing in reach, so we need to look deeper. A new tool has emerged that lets us look into the number of unique accounts that interacted with a user's content in the last 30 days, and the data is very telling. This data counts everyone on the protocol, not just those with good spam labels. If you think your engagement has gone down a lot over the past few weeks, you aren’t imagining it. Usually, if 2-3% of your followers interact with your casts, you are doing great. But what if most of the people who follow you never even see your casts in the latest version of the algorithm? Spoiler alert: they don’t. Let’s compare some of the biggest, most established accounts on the network to newer accounts who I believe are being artificially amplified. These accounts all have well over 100,000 followers each (even more on the protocol!), cast daily, and consistently engage back with the network. Their content and casting patterns have not changed noticeably over the last 30 days. The number of unique accounts they have reached in the last 30 days and how much their engagement is down is as follows: 15,400 (down 67%) 7,500 (down 49%) 1,500 (down 29%) 2,700 (down 36%) 6,500 (down 55%) 4,200 (down 54%) Now let’s compare this to one of the new accounts that I believe are being purposely placed into many users’ home feeds (note that these accounts have 1,000-3,000 followers). 10,500 The number of views on many of their casts are also between 10,000 and 18,000 views. Remember, the data above shows interactions, but even more people have seen these casts! A user with 1,000 followers getting seen by 10,000+ people requires external amplification. That reach doesn’t emerge organically. The algorithm chose to show them beyond their organic social graph. Observing a few examples of weird reach/follower ratios doesn’t necessarily prove systemic bias. Visibility is complex and can swing based on timing, interaction graphs, and reposts by top casters, but the math doesn’t add up without boosting. The people getting boosted didn’t necessarily ask to be. Now they’re targets of backlash; they are victims as well. Meanwhile, those who have not had this type of algorithmic boost feel invisible and demoralized, even if they’ve consistently added value to the community. It’s creating a toxic imbalance that erodes trust across the board. We can politely say “vibes are off” and tell people to just mute what they don’t want to see, but that’s not going to solve the issue at hand. This is deeper than engagement FOMO. We are watching something we’ve invested time into start to resemble the very platforms we came here to escape. The algorithm may be silent, but its choices are loud. If it is hand picking winners, the rest of us should stop pretending we’re playing the same game. Invest your time here accordingly.

I hate to be the one to break to to all of you who don’t come to IRL Farcaster events, but someone needs to tell you the truth. 1. On average, Farcasters are really tall. Like seriously. Something is in the water. 2. Farcasters are really good looking humans. It’s not like a normal crypto conference crowd. 3. They are also really nice. It feels unfair to see so many triple threats walking around, but it is what it is.

Engagement is a Two Way Street I’ve seen a lot of chatter on the timeline that engagement has been weird for the past 2 weeks. We’ve either all gotten worse at casting, the hype of “pro” has worn off, or the team has been experimenting with the algorithm and we are staring to feel the effects. Maybe it’s a combo of all 3 and we need to take some action. 1. Clean up who you follow 2. Change your Feed Setting to see All Replies for a week 3. Reply to every thoughtful comment & ignore low effort replies 4. Hack the recency bias in the algorithm 5. Turn on “Super Follow” (notifications) for your favorite casters or friends you want to see more 6. Change up how, when, and where you cast 7. Audit your own profile (handy Dune query below) 1. Clean up who you follow You can’t make people follow you or engage with you, but you can save your engagement for those who engage back. If you are being truly thoughtful and authentic and someone never replies to you (and you don’t have a spam label so you know they can see you!) then stop wasting your time and move on. People are busy, notifications are buggy, spam labels are real. But if someone ignores you, move on. Even a like is enough. If they give you zero interaction back, try someone else. Here’s a quick tool to see who is still around. Don’t follow spammy people. Save friends who are mislabeled as spam. https://recaster.org/tool/follow-checker 2. Change your Feed Setting to see All Replies for a week Farcaster is now letting you decide how many replies you want to see. I encourage everyone to change this setting to all for at least a week. Many casters have been in the shadows and you can help them be visible again. Some accounts are inundated by AI automated accounts and won’t be able to use this setting, but most people should be able to try this for at least a week. Block automated accounts liberally. Give real casters a chance. https://farcaster.xyz/v/0x1e17bba1 3. Reply to every thoughtful comment. Ignore low effort replies. If you want engagement you have to give it too. You don’t have to be a reply guy if it’s not your thing, but if people are taking the time to engage with your casts, take the time to reply back to authentic thoughtful comments. If someone is in broadcast only mode and never engages back, reevaluate why you are replying to them in the first place. Is their content amazing? Does it make your Farcaster experience better? 4. Hack the recency bias in the algorithm. The algorithm really loves whoever you last interacted with. So if you haven’t seen someone in a while or they haven’t seen you in a while, you’ve got to teach the algorithm what and more importantly WHO you want to see! If you let it decide for you, you won’t see the people you want to see the most. You’ve got to force and train it. 5. Turn on “Super Follow” (notifications) for your favorite casters or friends you want to see more Sometimes the algorithm doesn’t show you what you want to see and you have to force it. Turn on notifications for a few people for a week and interact with their casts more. This is a good hack to get the algorithm to show them to you more in the future, if it behaves. I’ve had to keep them on for a handful of people who don’t cast often. The algorithm really likes when you cast daily. 6. Change up how, when, and where you cast Videos don’t do that great here. Neither do photos or mint frames along. While we may want to share our content this way, the algorithm doesn’t love it. This is a text based social network and that has to be respected. Add more text around your content and try more experiments with text based casts. A great cast may not do well if most people aren’t online. Try casting at different times and experiment. Channels can be your place to find your tribe. There are thousands. Look for channels with very active hosts. They may have notifications on for their channels and be more excited when you choose to cast there. You can’t get a spam label interacting inside of channels so it’s more welcoming to new folks who are still trying to find their way. 7. Audit your own profile You can use this Dune query to see how you cast. Put in your own FID and run it. Then compare it to some other casters that you admire and you think are doing well. Comparison is the thief of joy, but benchmarking is the only way to truly figure out how you are doing in Farcasterland. https://www.dune.com/jkavithamahesh/farcasterprofile

I won’t pretend to even know what @privy does or how to works, but I love it because I used to have a lot of issues with wallets and apps and getting them connected. And suddenly many of my apps just worked like magic and when I asked why, the developers said, “oh, we moved to Privy”. Privy just makes stuff work like magic. I’m here for it. Congrats team. Hope you all get rich!

Fascinating analysis on the first 10,000 pro subscribers. We knew the NFT was going to drive subscriptions, but this is some of the first analysis of how intense the farming was. 24% of the people who minted had less than 10 followers. Almost 12% had 0 followers. Speculation on the future value of the NFT is right here in black and white. There is no way someone with 0 followers paid to “support” the protocol or get the future benefits of longer casts and more photos.

This is also a scam email from “CoinBase”. Treat every single email about crypto as an instant scam. 99% of them are. But they use the same tactics below. The number one tactic is pressure. Something is wrong with your account. There’s an airdrop to claim NOW. You will be locked out of your funds unless you take action. They are hoping you are tired, scared, and will click. Don’t be a victim. Triple check everything. Ask here. Ask in group chats. Don’t click anything.

In the 1960s, Japan switched to Western-style seated toilets, but people had no clue how to use them—so they put instruction labels on the toilets (PS these signs still exist today in most public toilets). Farcaster is the same way. It might look like other social media, but it works differently. You wouldn’t assume you know how to operate a high-tech bidet without instructions—so don’t assume you know how to “win” on Farcaster without observing and learning first. Luckily, you don’t have to figure it out alone. There are resources like @gmfarcaster , @warpee.eth , /farcasterunion , and /welcome . Use them. Ask for help. Leverage the kind people here. And once you get it, pay it forward. Don’t know shit? Read the instructions.

The Unwritten Rules of Farcaster (a thread 1/11) 1. Don’t ask for follows—most users ignore or avoid those who do. 2. Engagement matters—treat it as a social network, not just a broadcasting platform. 3. The algorithm prioritizes engagement—interact with content you like to train your feed. 4. Give likes freely to support content you enjoy. 5. Reply thoughtfully—generic responses don’t add value and may be ignored. 6. Tag people with purpose—avoid tagging non-followers without a good reason. 7. Use channels to connect—they’re a safe space for engaging beyond your followers. 8. If you’re being ignored, check your spam label—many won’t see your replies if you’re at Level 0 or 1. 9. Rules are looser with friends—banter freely, but remember relationships take time to build. 10. Farcaster is a unique, close-knit community—engage authentically, be patient, and you’ll find your place.

Send me all the pennies!

Warplet, I choose you!!! #MakeWarpletHappen https://2rb3ujr.warpcast.tools/api/frames/quiet-chipmunk-24

Day 19 of my zero following experiment. 1. It’s really hard to keep up with what’s going on inside of Farcaster. I forgot how much I depend on my network to keep me in the loop. But the main reason I did this was that I wasn’t seeing enough of the people I wanted to see. I had to rely on setting notifications for them and even that didn’t always work. Now I stalk about 15 peoples profiles daily and use group chats heavily. 2. My home feed is weird. For a while it struggled but now it mostly shows me very engaged posts in channels I follow. This is AWESOME. I don’t want to trending feed button. I want a “trending in the channels you follow” button. This is way more likely to lead to content discovery. I see so much from these channels that I wouldn’t organically see because I don’t follow most of the folks who were posting there. My feed is full of /yellow and /superrare and /nature photos and art and I love it. Show me the best of each channel so I can find cool people.

Channel changes have been in effect for 48 hours and I have some lessons learned: 1. Be sure to follow the channel you want to be invited to. Some automated tools don’t work correctly unless you already follow the channel. 2. For hypersub gated channels, best to also follow @hyperbot until the kinks are worked out. 3. Be sure your notifications are set to “Priority Notifications” so you can see the channel tab. Scroll the whole tab to make sure you didn’t miss an invite. 4. There are a lot of bugs. Give grace and assume hosts have the best intentions but are trying to figure it all out too. 5. I’m not longer getting notifications from anyone unless I follow them. This is supposedly a bug. For now, best to go through your casts and check the replies manually. You may have way more than you think. Also check “Show More Replies” often until more channels have more members.

If you are building community here on Farcaster, you are doing it via channels. You must listen to the last 15 mins of this call to hear first hand about potential upcoming BIG changes to channels. Starts at minute 28.