Checking the comment velocity of real users

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.