Farcaster removed reply bumping around 4 february 2024 21:23 UTC(related post) The reason for removing reply bumping was that channels had plenty of posts . This research essentially tries to find the impact of removal of reply bumping and chrono-feed on farcaster.
The analysis will be mostly restricted to sub 100k fids. Farcaster hit that number soon after going permissionless. Though many of these 'FIDs' aren't actual users i.e. they don't own storage(not that they're spammy).
caveats - The farcaster network is continuously growing and evolving. this means that there might be several causes for the changes in user behavior over time. Ensuring that the correct cause is attributed to the correct impact is an important but difficult task. As such, several different methods are used to explore farcaster's data and a decent attempt is made to normalize the data.
All of the analysis is done in UTC
Directly answering what was asked in poidh.
Analysis should look at # of threads with comments by 3 or more unique FIDs before February, then the same metric after February (excluding bots and tipping comments) - analysis should be restricted to only power badge users or pre-100k FIDs to normalize data - the fundamental question is "what were the odds that, if a real user responded to a real user pre-February, that a third real user would then join that conversation" - after that question is answered, we'll want to see how those odds changed post-February
All the analyses don't count tipping comments(ones with $ sign) unless stated otherwise.
Firstly, i look at the daily number of replies received to a comment on a post. In this case all three people(the original poster, the commentor and replier of the commentor) are different people and have fid under 100k. this is what the data looks like. As you can see- The number of replies have gone down. Interestingly enough - the sub 100k fids are more active now than they were in december/jan so the number being lower is all the more surprising
One thing to note is that this data also includes those cases where the third person is actually the fourth commenter or is replying to a reply of a reply of original and so on. Their data is included as long the replier, the commenter he is replying to and the original poster are all different people
From here on out i will call a reply to a comment as a 'reply-comment' or 'second comment'
The reply to the original post may be referred to as 'first reply'
Okay what if the number of replies by sub 100k fid to sub 100k fids are down because the people are replying to greater than 100k fids as well?
This is indeed the case -
But If you look at the percent of 'reply-comments' vs total posts then it paints an interesting insight.
As, it can be seen - the percentage of reply comments have been reduced as compared to the total number of posts. In short - a sub 100k fid person is less likely to reply to a comment(Irrespective of the commentor fid). So this essentially means- although there are more active sub 100k users now than there were before. The percent of the 'reply-comments' have gone significantly down since early February which is when reply-bumping was removed
What do these 'reply-comments' look like? - If i only look at the data for sub 100k fids then the 'reply-comments' aren't spammy and surprisingly most of them are pretty interesting.
Though if i allow any fid then the comments become very spammy
What percent of comments by sub 100k FIDs received a reply by another sub 100k fid? The percentage has drastically gone down. So while sub 100k are more active than before, they are less likely to reply to other's comments. You might be at a disadvantage at having your content remain undiscovered if you mainly use farcaster by commenting.
Though it should be mentioned that your odds of receiving a reply(from any user - not just sub 100k) are practically the same even if tipping comments are filtered. Though i am assuming that some spam still goes through(see the spammy comments later) so the actual overall odds are lower.
If no FIDs are restricted then this is what the data looks like -
Now let's take a look at what these unreplied replies look like for sub 100k fid users -
Without tip filtering-
With tipping filtering -
What are the chances that a third distinct user would reply that happens to be mutuals with the first-replier -
if no fid restriction-
If only the first replier's fid is restricted to sub 100k-
Number of tipping comments over time -
Replies(excluding self replies) vs original casts by sub 100k FIDS(excludes tipping comments)
What is the weekly number of people that an average sub 100k fid replies to. The median is currently sitting at 3 increased from 2 since jan 24. This ofcourse only counts those users that are atleast replying once that week. So if a user is inactive in a week then it isn't taken into calculation.
The median number of users replied to has gone up from 2 to 3.
What the data looks like if there's no FID restriction(tipping comments still excluded)-
The median number of users replied to sit around 3-4
Now, i'll look at different feeds randomly.
Looking at people's chrono feeds with and without tipping at random points
Kenny's feed -
Keccer's feed -
My personal conclusion to the the data shown are that -
Farcaster went heavy in killing reply bumping in february but decided to change the algo again somewhere around in may to somewhat show replies though still not to the same extent as it once used to show. It is very clear from the data that the algo is being tweaked to somewhat favor replies again
I am paraphrasing here but i remember Dan mentioning in one of the late night night crew taverns that reply bumping is not being reinstated because it would only be helpful to power users of the app and not the general users. Farcaster currently is trying to properly tweak its algorithm for the general audience
The data shows that the relationship between people on farcaster is getting closer to being that of consumer-producers as opposed to that of being friends though it is still better than most social medias today . This is not necessarily a good or a bad thing, it is just the direction in which farcaster is going.
<100 subscribers
yesyes
notifications for people posting that haven't posted in 8 months but I can't get a normal "following" feed with all posts from the people I follow lol
you will get it soon!! working on it
oh sick then this will be the biggest app in crypto lfg
ok ok ok to manage expectations “soon” is relative term, i’m not the one working on it but it is being worked on
Weird question but how do you fix your #1 app for a month having robbed everyone and gone to (what's that -99%) or just straight shit ? It's still like, the best thing going. Hahahaha. That sucks. Hashtag neverforget What is fixable? Never letting something like that happen ever again? Or just trying to hide this massive extraction of money from users and never mentioning it again? I am curious because I should lower my standards and rug people more often if that's just supposed to be okay with everyone
what're you referencing? we're talking about the following feed
Wait do you not have this?
that following feed doesn't show you every post from the people you follow it shows you the top level posts they make I want everything (their replies to other people + their recasts)
Ah I see. I really want custom feeds where you can choose what you want to see by adjusting different filters and selecting which users.
Convince yourself for years in an echo chamber that what you are doing is a good idea and then realize, It is dog shit. But what do I know I'm just a regular user who thought "ohhh eggs seems solid it's from the higher ups" That went like a rotten egg on hot dog shit. It's too late now. Next cycle maybe this mistake won't happen with the next group of people to burn.
Most of my casts are replies. Which apparently means nobody sees most of my casts.
I see this one, but it's not a reply 🤣
that's true, i never see your casts
😡
I (inadvertently) game the system by occasionally writing the "best" reply, usually by being funny or helpful. After a certain threshold, I *think* 3-5 likes, the top reply surfaces on the home feed and thus pairs with the original cast. There's a first mover advantage too.
this system still sucks tho because unless your reply is a direct reply, it'll never show up in the home feed no matter how many likes it gets deep back and forth conversations get no visibility
Can confirm — nobody is ever doing to read these comments. 😄
Can confirm — saw this comment on the home feed.
Sucks because it ruins threading
And it dramatically reduces the quality of conversations. I think it's a major L for a smaller, up and coming social network like this one. Everyone here feels very "distant".
Improving reply visibility is the type of change that would be very hard to measure via a short-term A/B experiment so I understand why it might be hard to motivate for a team staring at dashboards all day. It would require a bit of a leap of faith in absense of a more sophisticated experimental infrastructure for tracking longer term impacts on engagement.
Just turned on the notifications now I’ll catch all your casts.
Feels like interaction on casts dies off faster than on twitter Do tweets generally seem to have longer half life?
@kenny i know you've got thoughts on feed algo lmfao
hey @xmon.eth let me introduce you to the research we did to prove they killed interaction on here by removing reply bumping (they say things are better this way tho) https://paragraph.com/@yesyes/checking-the-comment-velocity-of-real-users
damn good write up
can you explain a bit more? will look into this too to see what the data shows
I feel like tweets get replies for a longer period after the initial post For casts it feels like all interactions are front loader within the first few hrs of posting
yeah, think the content is very ephemeral here. i liked going to the /whitelotus channel and liking through older casts because they were still relevant to me as a viewer / enjoyer of the show.
We still luv u
damn they rly did drive away the best users back to twitter didn’t they …. What a shame
What’s missing, in your opinion? Genuine question, from someone who never really used X/twitter for much more than lurking.
man im just seeing nothing interesting over here rn and even the new team member so desperate (is the vibe it gives) to spotlight even its most notorious bad actors… maybe its just quiet but like damn. feels to me like all the stuff that was coolest with the possibilities on this platform were identified by builders like deployer with ham and all but they were never friendly to it - so much so that these builders literally figured out how to do all the cool things elsewhere (e.g. bankrbot). i imagine things could have gone a lot differently but frankly im yet again disappointed by leadership nit having the wits to just embrace the fun stuff that actually could keep good users interested here… maybe im just being grouchy but like man the vibe of having fumbled it feels heavy ….
I feel like Jesse (and Base, more generally), have received similar critiques - not doing enough to highlight/market native builders, embrace new tech, etc. I’m interested to see how things will change when Farcaster is integrated within Coinbase Wallet. Though that doesn’t really address your concerns. Are the vibes much better on X though? All I hear about crypto twitter is how toxic it is. The audience is bigger, obviously, but I don’t spend enough time on there to know. And when I do, it’s hard to separate the wheat from the chaff.
I'm a broken record on this point but the vibe here is unnecessarily muted compared to twitter because of the feed design twitter you can scroll the "following" feed and see all the bankr stuff happening in real-time, people reacting and responding, it's a part you come here and there's no feed that feels "alive", the home feed is a highlight show and the following feed doesn't have reply bumping so it's basically Reddit's "new" feed
I’ve tried to hold out hope but like wtf it’s wild how bad they are at retaining good content - and it feels like every move is more tone deaf than the last tbh
i dig the tech! i like fell in love with it honestly back when. but they keep like only making it less and less hospitable i really do not understand it at all it’s so weird
one final thought on this the argument against naive reply bumping seems to boil down to "new users don't like it so it doesn't matter" yes, it's counterintuitive to support a feed that new users don't care about when new users is the most important goal for Warpcast however, Dan himself has said that the reason why new users bounce is because there's "not enough interesting content" ok, so where does that content come from? well everything we know about social networks tells us that 1% of users create all the content en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule with this in mind, the conversation about new users shifts back to empowering power users to be as active as possible on here creating content and responding to + sharing other people's content this is why it doesn't matter if "<1% of all users use the following feed" if it helps power users create more content, it will benefit the entire network
What do you think of a compromise for self-recasted replies? https://warpcast.com/shazow.eth/0x2ca7931a
helps surface more conversation in the following feed so I'm on board!
@dwr.eth it's a good compromise solution, let's doo iiiit
I wonder how they arrived at the "new users don't like it" conclusion?
I'm sure the data shows that the vast majority of new users stick to the home feed or quickly bounce when given a chronological feed of new posts with no likes but again what they should be concerned with are the 1% of that 99% who want to grind and build an audience on here of course those people are going to want to play the classic "reply guy" strategy of being early to new posts and building an audience through that visibility
Removing replying bumping was extremely short sighted and killed the user experience. Home feed is actually super terrible for everyone and everyone knows it. Default following feed and return to reply bumping please, then we can stop talking to the same 50 people everyday and the same lame content in home.
not sure if you've seen it but if you want some data to back up your statement about killing user experience: https://paragraph.xyz/@yesyes/checking-the-comment-velocity-of-real-users
One way to look at this is that the luxury scale is moving downstream to the pre natal, the gestational. When everyone can run the card to get the $5k stroller, how else are you supposed to flex? Not sure why Ted’s asking us to think about the surrogate here. You aren’t supposed to. She’s an animal, a breed mare. A nameless, faceless, disposable person.
a handmaid if you will
why do you always quote cast me instead of replying to me lol
Because your company’s incentive structure rewards me to do it that way, mostly
@kenny look at the way keccers protests on the same issue 😗
is that really why
based
navigating reply chains in FC is ... suboptimal (but I don't have a banger solution to suggest) perhaps this video illustrates what I mean? (ignore when I accidentally clicked through to zinger's profile)
hmm will u reply me instead?
QTs always get more viewership.
Concerning!! But really, imo this is the disempowerment of women. A society that says pregnancy is a negative, will involve suffering and potentially harm your career so you should outsource that to someone else, is just so twisted. Without even getting into the class stuff, it turns parenting into a service, neglecting the biological and psychological bonds formed during pregnancy.
I call it “rent a womb”
For a culture that values 'experiences' it's odd that arguably one of the most meaningful and memorable experiences is being scorned.
Would love to see more replies in the feed, especially ones posted late after the initial cast. Currently it feels like there is a bit of a reply-guy dynamic similar to 𝕏 where the fastest to reply to a popular account tends to get the most likes and eyeballs.
I see this as well. Following feed for the win.
Keep forgetting that exists. Need to browse it more often.
also justified because when we had more replies in the feed conversations on the entire network were provably deeper https://paragraph.xyz/@yesyes/checking-the-comment-velocity-of-real-users
oh also gotta point out the irony here @darrylyeo recasts don't show up in the "following" feed either so they're incredibly nerfed as a way of spreading info on the network (another thing limiting all of us)
Yup, for this reason I’ve started treating recasts more like “public bookmarks” or “super-likes”
As someone who mostly replies and does very little standalone casting, I highly support this sentiment. I try to add value to the original post when I comment, but based on the engagement metrics that I'm seeing on my profile, my comments aren't reaching a lot of people. Either that, or my comments are just bad. That's a reality I'm also open to. 🙂😂
I notice the same, good callout
specially if you are not following the replyer, you won't even get notified and need to scroll through all your replies
Yes, mildly annoying