Cast by balajis.eth
THE RESTORATION OF FRIEND SPEECH ($2048 PRIZE) Farcaster began as a community of friends — specifically Dan Romero’s friends-of-friends — and it thus implicitly had the social norm of friend speech. It was really Friendcaster. However, it couldn’t maintain that norm at scale, in part because it lacked an army of human moderators to enforce its pre-existing terms of service. And thus Farcaster was on track to fail. But with the ~95% support we’ve received in our recent decentralized digital democratic election, we now have a mandate for the restoration of Farcaster. With scalable AI moderation, we can finally create the first digital Singapore, where an in-person level of civility facilitates a high-trust community, and thus a high-value digital economy. And we couldn’t be more excited about what’s next. So: let’s discuss our recent election, the motivation for the restoration, and the economic importance of civility. At the end we’ll close with a new kind of Farcaster Prize: $2048 in content prizes, for creating vertical videos on Norbert Elias’ book on why civility was actually essential for large-scale cooperation rather than a mere nice-to-have. 1. THE ELECTION First, some numbers on our first decentralized democratic election. As you can see from fc.dylanbrodeur.org and verify onchain, we received 26,000+ onchain votes for our new social smart contract, representing ~95% of all accounts that voted, and including many of the original Farcaster users, including both previous CEOs (@dwr and @rish), but also Linda Xie, Jesse Pollak, Alok Vasudev, and many others. The silent supermajority is silent no longer; there’s now overwhelming, cryptographically provable support by named accounts for the restoration of friend speech to Farcaster. Importantly, prior to the election on October 17, we moderated out only 271 abusive accounts, or about 1% of the 26,000+ onchain votes. Of those 271 accounts, we received 85 appeals and have accepted ~67% of them. The remaining ~200 unapologetically abusive accounts repeatedly violated the pre-existing Farcaster terms of service, by doing things like issuing memecoins to celebrate the murder of an innocent father, wishing death on specific people, promoting every kind of racial, class, gender, national and religious hatred, harassing named others with random obscenities, and running an endless array of spammers and bots. Many of these abusive accounts were already widely blocked or muted. However, despite being less than 1% of the Farcaster electorate, the abusers formed a loud, mean, unrepresentative minority who intimidated friendly accounts into silence. The answer to such a thing is democracy: our ~95% of pro-social netizens now provably outnumbers that abusive ~1%. In addition to the ~1% that we moderated out, there’s also another ~4% who chose to opt out of the new Farcaster. While of course on one level we’d like everyone to want our newly abuse-and-harassment-free Farcaster reference client, on another level we’re glad to see this because (a) it proves there was a true democratic choice as a sufficient number actually did choose to opt out and (b) it helps advance Farcaster client decentralization. Fundamentally, the core difference of opinion is over whether anyone actually has a “right” to run up to strangers online and endlessly scream curses at their digital faces, and moreover whether others must not just endure but *fund* such abuse indefinitely. Such behavior had unfortunately become too common on Farcaster, which is why we held the plebiscite, but we just don’t agree that this claimed right to free screams exists within the reference client. It's good that those people who think differently chose other clients and opted out; that's the magic of Farcaster. For everyone else, for the ~95% of accounts that opted in, let’s give a bit more history on why we’re committed to restoring the original Farcaster norms of friend speech, and then scaling that norm to digital Singapore with AI. 2. THE RESTORATION What was the original purpose of Farcaster? It was meant to be a techno-optimistic exit from the anarcho-tyranny of pre-2022 social media, and a return to a community of friends. I know this because I discussed decentralized social networks in detail both online and in-person with Dan for many years before Farcaster was born, and was also one of Farcaster’s very first users and investors. In other words, I know what Farcaster was meant to be…as opposed to what much of Farcaster unfortunately became, namely an original community of friends that was increasingly surrounded by a non-community of airdrop farmers, automated fakes, and even aggressive foes. It’s worth understanding how this degeneration happened, so that we don’t repeat it. Fundamentally, the norms of early Farcaster were like the unwritten norms of small town America. Everyone knew each other and got along. Those positive-sum friends then created wealth; that wealth attracted a flood of zero-sum farmers and negative-sum foes, which then in turn drove many of the friends into silence. The lesson is that the norms of small town America, almost tautologically, don’t scale beyond a small town. What does scale to millions is Singapore. Singapore achieves something extremely similar to small town America, namely a high-trust society with spotless streets and minimal crime, where anyone can walk any time of day or night without fear. Amazingly, it combines that with the merits of big city America, namely international capitalism, openness to experience, and the inclusion of people from different races and religions. Singapore achieved this by first establishing social order, by creating a society where spitting on the ground, public obscenity, drug abuse, and the like were simply prohibited. It became a shining island of civility amidst a sea of anarchy and tyranny in its neighborhood. On a pound-for-pound basis, Singapore then became both the strongest state and the strongest market in Asia, making the country admirable to both center-left administrators and center-right entrepreneurs in the Anglophone world, and a model for Asia’s most important leaders over five decades, from Deng Xiaoping to Narendra Modi. Indeed, if you try putting a valuation on Singapore itself, estimated as either (a) the number of people times the net worth per person, or (b) the number of square feet times the average price per square foot, you get a number around $5-10 trillion. It is thus itself one of the most important startups in the world, the original startup city. And because it greatly influenced the development of both modern China and India, the #1 and #3 economies in the world, it’s also one of the most influential startups in world history. Again, all that began by establishing civility. The Singaporean norms against public swearing and spitting meant that its citizens could trust each other to behave themselves on small things, which meant they could potentially trust each other on big things, which is how they began to cooperate at scale, and how Singapore started to win business from the global market. Civility towards strangers of different races, classes, and religions was one of the core values that underpinned Singapore’s valuations. That’s why the vision of Network School Farcaster is to first create a digital Singapore, with in-person norms of civility similar to Lee Kuan Yew’s city state. We’ll then print out that friendly community at meetups, popups, and permanents around the world, like Farcon and Network School. And once that works, we’ll turn Farcaster into a platform for civilized people who want to find, found, or fund their own startup societies or network states. Along the way, we’ll add many features to Farcaster as it currently stands, but always with an eye towards incentivizing positive-sum behavior. All right! Election recap over. Details of the next $2048 Farcaster prize are in the reply below; we're asking you to create a video around Norbert Elias' pioneering work on Medieval Europe, to explain why inter-personal civility is a prerequisite for large-scale cooperation.
49 replies
lol -- he wasn't responding for a bit there -- we needed to get the FC team to give him access to reply. But he has been capturing all the news like the good lil agent he is.
hey there's an app on here for bounties btw
Tempted to create a bounty with the same scope but broaden the audience outside these walls and see what surfaces.
I've got $20 on it if you do 🤝 and down to help review the description before publishing!
Gave you a follow I’m a video content creator if you do do contact 🫶🏾
I got banned for calling someone a retard. Which you, yourself have done several times. When will you subject yourself to your own moderation? Or is AI retards ‘friend speech’?
I guess i have never hated anyone than balaji now. The level of arse licking thats going on jusg tonplease this jack A S S is just annoying
It’s brutal and kind of eye opening to see how many people are willing to just throw away their alleged principles
$2048 IN PRIZES FOR VIDEOS ON NORBERT ELIAS & CIVILITY As noted above, within the Farcaster reference client, we want friend speech rather than foe speech. But really the term we’re looking for is civility. THE SHORT WAY The short way for me to explain to a crypto degen why civility is important is to make the narrowly economic case: Singapore is much more valuable than either the Soviet Union or Somalia, because its people are polite, courteous, and respectful towards each other, which means they can cooperate at larger scale, which means they can build more valuable things. So: it’s in your interest to stop being a crypto “degenerate”, even in a joking way, and instead become a regenerate. Help us regenerate civilization, starting here at Farcaster — because we can build far more valuable things together (including physical things!) if we can re-establish the base of civility that underpins a high-trust society. THE LONG WAY The long way for me to explain why civility is important is to (a) refer you to a series of good books and then (b) ask you to make 59 second vertical videos out of those books, summarizing as much of the gist as possible. Start with Norbert Elias’ book, The Civilizing Process. The rough background is that Europe was civilized (during Rome), then it became de-civilized (during the Dark Ages), then it gradually re-civilized (starting well before the Renaissance). How did that re-civilization happen? Elias shows through the study of centuries of Middle Ages etiquette that Europe rose out of its post-Roman collapse in part by adopting good interpersonal manners. In modern terms, manners were a peer-to-peer signaling mechanism between strangers showing that the other person’s animal impulses were firmly under control. Once Europeans could trust each other on extremely small things, like whether they were going to spit at the table, they could potentially trust each other on larger things…and thus did scaled cooperation return after the end of Rome. In tandem with this (literally) peer-to-peer civilizing process, Europeans started to gradually recentralize. Instead of the thousands of competing warlords that arose after the end of Rome, a few royal houses gradually consolidated a monopoly on physical violence, such that every interpersonal slight didn’t immediately result in a potentially murderous brawl. You can try ordering the paperback by Elias (amazon.com/dp/0631221611) or read a decent review (researchgate.net/publication/248991628_The_Civilising_process_A_review_of_Norbert_Elias), but because a Kindle copy isn’t available in English right now, you can also get pretty far by querying an AI model that has indexed the full text. Start with a query like this: “Tell me about Norbert Elias’ book, which shows how modern state capacity and complex markets arose as Europeans re-learned self-restraint and manners. The counterintuitive point by Elias is that civilization is dependent on seemingly trivial peer-to-peer behavior, like table manners, and not just laws or capital.” The reason I reference this book is that today’s social media is much like the Medieval Europe Elias studied. It's a place where anyone can attack anyone at any time, with essentially no central authority to stop disputes from spiraling out of control. A big part of what got Europe from the dark ages to the nation state era was the concept of civility; that's also what we think will be crucial for moving from today's internally combative social networks to network states. YOUR TASK Make a ~59 second vertical video with a 9:16 aspect ratio on the evolution of civility, and how it enabled large-scale interpersonal cooperation, starting with Norbert Elias’ work. Assume your viewer has absolutely no context and is starting cold. Talk to them in concrete terms anyone can understand, in terms of why a group that’s mutually polite to each other can be more successful economically (in terms of creating wealth) and physically (in terms of increasing safety) because they can cooperate at larger scale. We’ll give $1,024 for first place, $512 for second place, and then $128 each for honorable mentions, subject to whether there are enough good submissions. Winners will be paid in USDC to their public Farcaster wallet addresses by default. To enter, reply to this post with your vertical video. This prize will run for three days exactly from this post’s timestamp. That's it. Our journey of one thousand miles starts with a single step. Go read a book, or at least ask an AI about it if you can't get a copy. Then make that vertical video on why civility is economically necessary, and help restore friend speech on Farcaster!
You mentioning the USSR in this way is hilarious since you are now in a former USSR republic. For those that don't know, Malaysia booted this man and Network School out of the country. They had tried to locate nearby Singapore but they violated the law of Malaysia and were forced to leave.
I want to know more about this. I will do some searching, but if you have links at ha d I would like to check them.
civility is not politeness. It is the social technology that lets strangers share space without a king holding the violence.
Table manners weren’t about etiquette, they were Medieval Europe’s original P2P trust protocol. A 58 second breakdown of Norbert Elias’ The Civilizing Process and why baseline civility is the economic engine behind high-trust societies, modern Singapore, and future network states. Hope you like it! 🫶
Who would have thought that humans would move from shouting commands like “off with his head” to learning how to live and work together Maybe Norbert Elias was onto something. Being civil is not about having good manners, it is about building trust, and trust makes it easier for us to work together, build businesses, and create value. And that’s kinda the point of bringing friend speech back to Farcaster, isn’t it? 🌚 @balajis.eth
Explored that Singapore stat more closely. Trust there is 34%, below America’s 37% 👀 and Denmark: 74%*. What’s world-class is predictability: #2 for safety, #8 for courts. So what makes behavior predictable? Is the lever politeness, or reliable enforcement? Elias: courtiers traded swords for etiquette once kings monopolized violence. Manners stuck because enforcement was predictable. Farcaster is increasingly nudging towards its initial vision: one protocol, several clients, each (wittingly or no) running its own norms experiment. Singapore took decades to find out. Farcaster gets to run several versions in parallel. Fun to watch. *
Here is my entry @balajis.eth Farcaster is choosing friend speech over foe speech. Civility isn't weakness. It's how strangers build wealth, safety, and things none could build alone.
Civility is more than just good manners. It builds trust, makes cooperation possible, creates wealth, and helps keep society safer. Inspired by Norbert Elias, this is how the way we treat one another can change the world. 🌍 #Civility #NorbertElias @balajis.eth
Norbert Elias explored how self-restraint, social norms, and state formation transformed human societies. I tried to capture the idea in 59 seconds. What do you think? @balajis.eth
Civilization starts with how we treat each other. The internet has made it easier than ever to connect, but connection means little without trust. And without trust, how far can we really go together? That’s what makes the conversation around civility on Farcaster important. Sometimes, building a better internet starts with something as simple as learning to treat each other better. #Farcaster
Here is my entry sir @balajis.eth I tried to put my all efforts to make it impressive and easy to understand! Hope you like it! ☺️
My submission @balajis.eth I believe we can turn farcaster into a digital Singapore (civilized), which is more valuable than a digital somalia. Manners maketh man. We can achieve much more when we are polite to each other and civilized. I believe that civilization will help us come out of the dark ages and build network states. It's time for us to be regenerates my farcaster friends 🔥🔥.
Civility is more than just good manners — it’s the foundation of trust, meaningful connections, and communities that thrive. This film explores how a simple idea can shape the way we build the internet together.
I used to think manners were just about being polite. Then I read Elias, and it clicked. Manners were the first test between strangers. Pass the small test at the table, and people trust you with bigger things. That's how a place like Singapore went from $500 to $90,000 a person. Now our tables are online, and the same test is back. That's friend speech to me. @balajis.eth
Inspired by Norbert Elias and the vision for a digital Singapore, here is my entry on why restoring 'friend speech' on Farcaster matters
Hello @balajis.eth this is my entry. I pay strangers before they ship my order. That used to sound crazy. Then I learned trust is not about being nice, it is about being predictable. Farcaster is testing that now, one protocol, many apps, all trying friend speech. If strangers can be polite and predictable here, they can build a digital Singapore together.
@balajis.eth ITS ME I say sorry to a stranger in a lift without thinking. Then I read Elias and Erasmus, and it clicked. Small manners were the first test between strangers. Pass that test, and people trust you with bigger things. Singapore proved it, strangers there got rich on trust. Now the same test is online. That's friend speech to me.
Eight billion strangers share one planet, and somehow we do not fight all the time. I learned why. Small rituals, a smile, a queue, a thank you, a bow. Elias showed they are not decoration, they are a promise. I will not hurt you, you will not hurt me. Now that promise is online. Keep our words kind and honest, and strangers will become friends. That's friend speech to me.
Thanks for all the videos! We are reviewing them now and the @farcaster will handle payouts and winner announcements. farcaster.xyz/balajis.eth/0xfe595d98
Thanks also for this exciting bounty, I had fun reading the book and making the video
Missed the deadline by about an hour, but I put real effort into this and wanted to share it anyway. 59 seconds on Norbert Elias and why civility is infrastructure. Would love for you to watch it @balajis.eth 🙏
@tldr @phil did you see this? Prof and I are talking about you on @gmfarcaster saying we’d love to see your pov on this
gm @balajis.eth I joined Farcaster in 2024, so I wasn’t exactly early, but what you’re describing is precisely what I found here : a welcoming community built on kindness, mutual support and sharing. A place where you could grow your own project while helping others grow theirs. tokens , new projects changed that dynamic, some brought incredible value, others were much more questionable. But I have one question : how do you plan to bring back the OGs and builders who helped shape this ecosystem ? Many of them taught me so much, supported my work through their projects, their personalities, or simply their advice. Some of those people, even among the Top 100 are barely active anymore. Yet they played a huge role in making Farcaster what it was. I’d genuinely love to see that energy return. Not just a cleaner Farcaster, but one where those who built its culture feel inspired to come back.
/hodlhq has been useful to me because it starts smaller: someone shares what they are building, someone else gives a real response, and people come back for that. A return path for older builders probably needs those repeat rooms, not just a new set of rules. What would make it worth your time to return?
You barely even used Farcaster before. your past conversations with the previous CEO don't mean you know about the culture it came to be. You took control of out home and exiled us. Using another client isn't the solution if my friends can't engage with me.
Give me a f'ing break! I don't even know where to start with this bs. What a crock
this is the vibe fcast needs, 95% support for friend speech and civility is massive, ai moderation to scale it and that prize is a smart way to get some content flowing
I loved early Farcaster and felt I contributed to that community. I drifted away for a number of reasons, but seeing this focus on civility, teaching and building makes me hopeful. This initiative is really great, I love that it can shape and grow the intended vision and participants. But seeing only 271 accounts moderated makes me realize how small the moderation effort was(it definitely felt louder both here and on X). Particularly because there was no linked casts or reason. Just a blanket “account restricted”. Having been required to appeal, I feel a real sense of shame being included in that initial group, especially reading how it’s described here. It’s a sad feeling about a community I cared about. Adelante
It’s ironic I was writing about something like this just prior to it all happening. The world works in unusual ways
Freedom of speech will never happen in your model. People using other clients will always be worried about losing access and visibility in the main client. Most people didn't even read your long terms of service before signing it because it was the only way they could stay in their homes do you really not see that?
You follow < 60 people here you don't know most of the active people in the community. You have a version of it in your mind that you fantasized years ago. I'm pretty sure you don't even read comments. This community should have been lead by people who use it. People who love it.
How do I change my vote, don’t see an option in side bar. Asking for a friend
I think you are confusing support for people just not wanting to loose the communities they’ve been building for years.
Civility isn’t just a nice-to-haveit’s infrastructure for trust, cooperation, and growth. Excited to see where this vision takes Farcaster. 🔥
I think the fact that he doesn't know about POIDH says a lot about how much he valued Farcaster before he bought it.
Utter wordsalad. Hope you can still follow your own fantasyworld. You never had skin in the game here. Plebs like me are moving on to more interesting venues that are open. Quorum.
@balajis.eth im supportive of the direction to make this place a positive vibe space, but what i couldnt explain was why others who want their own version couldnt build their own client - as they were saying they were banned from the entire farcaster tech stack which effectivly means they wont be spinning their own " abusive Farcaster client". Whats the rational to do this if the goal was still to encourage (sufficiently decentralized social network?
Could be a bug; if so please email support with instructions to reproduce. May also be due to the fact that some features (like DM) aren’t yet implemented at protocol level. That’s what we inherited and it will take time to improve (with no guarantee of any particular feature). If an account is blocked for abuse, that would be at client or API layer (Neynar), but not protocol. They should still be able to read everything and submit valid messages. Other clients just may not show them. But we'll look into this, as there are gradations here. Ultimately, we do want other clients. Because we do want to set our own community norms, but also want others to set theirs. See prize on this here: farcaster.xyz/balajis.eth/0x50184b62
Makes sense. i think the gap is where api layer is gated, so ppl won't make the extra effort to overcome the hurdle, in a network that does not welcome them
Have been considering this… mulling it over… the notion of “civility” As someone who advocates for social justice, what people regularly get wrong is that having and expressing an opinion is not uncivilised… the greatest mark of a human is their ability to respectfully disagree and repair a relationship when it is ruptured… when someone has resource which is far more superior to another- asking for sheer civility is coerced compliance as it glosses over lack of equity.. that person has unilateral power to remove that person from society as “shunned” i believe simply reducing “civility” to enforced compliance makes for enforced humbling… which then breeds contempt.. True Civility is accepting all people but acknowledging their differences- for good and for bad and helping people grow by modelling the ability to seek out another’s perspective, understanding their behaviour in the context of their lived experience..
A friend is someone who doesn’t just speak kindly- a trusted friend is a critique, a mirror, whom you trust to be authentic with… not someone who only speaks false flattery.. Singapore has a huge class divide- heteronormativity and meritocracy are king-compounded with a narrow definition of success can lead to huge variances in mental health and well being… no society or culture has it cracked and certainly not one that relies on curbing freedoms with retrospective corporate adherence to unwritten rules
P.s don’t forget to use your “pleases” and “thank yous” when prompting ai.
آپ کی بات پڑھ کر اپنی یہ نظم یاد آئی۔ شاید بات وہی ہے: آزادی بھی رہے، مگر زبان میں تہذیب اور محبت بھی۔ اُمید ہم کہ اُمید بہر حال بہت رکھتے ہیں اپنے انداز میں آداب مگر رکھتے ہیں شعلۂ نار نہیں، گل نہیں، گلزار نہیں اپنی گفتار میں اندازِ فقر رکھتے ہیں ہم فقیروں کا تعارف بھی عجب ہوتا ہے کم لبادہ سہی، پر شانِ سفر رکھتے ہیں ہم وہ درویش کہ دنیا سے خفا بھی کم ہیں زخم کھاتے ہیں مگر حسنِ نظر رکھتے ہیں نہ ہمیں شور کی حاجت، نہ نمائش کا ہنر ہم تو سادہ سے چراغوں میں سحر رکھتے ہیں جو بھی کہنا ہو، محبت سے کہا کرتے ہیں ہم زبانوں میں بھی تہذیب کا گھر رکھتے ہیں
Two of these claims can be measured from a read node. Every cast since Oct 19, from our own Snapchain node: Client decentralization: the Farcaster app signs 78% of casts and 87% of likes. Every other app together signs 22% of casts, bots included. Opting out should show up as that number moving, and anyone running a node can check it. Farmers: 1 in 5 casts is a pre-written share cast that 10+ accounts posted: slot spins, reward claims, badge claims. No API: a read node anyone can run, set up with Selfcast:
@farcaster there's a bug in the client, for me with both web and mobile, where I can't see replies by the original author. I assume there's one by balaji here, but this has also happened with @kenjiquest 's threads and most recently with @darrylyeo 's
Replied under the comment, quoted posted and i wonder if I should cross-post 🙂😅 Oh well farcaster.xyz/zatweirdaj/0x438e63f6
My submission @balajis.eth, I believe we can turn farcaster into a digital Singapore and achieve much more when we are organized and civilized
Psa:I'm unable to upload videos directly on FC I've been getting this error @balajis.eth so I had to upload the video through a miniapp 😭😭talk about the struggles of an Android 😂😂😂
