Why (not) Decentralized Social?

2 Oct 2025

I want crypto native, decentralized social to succeed and go mainstream. Working my hardest to do my part helping the team and community get there. If you want to see this vision too, would appreciate you posting and inviting others to Farcaster 🙏
– @linda on farcaster

I saw people mirror quoting this cast from @linda on farcaster and was about to do a snarky quote cast like "why I don't want decentralized social to succeed and go mainstream...", but it feels slightly ironic posting that there, so I decided to do write a bit longer form with more nuance here that I've been meaning to do for a while anyway.

I have found it to be an interesting exercise to actually write down why we would want farcaster to succeed. There are a few great points to be made:

  1. Portable social graph!
  2. Nobody can delete your data!
  3. Choose a client that suits you! (or even build your own)
  4. This could be the last social platform you sign up for!

I'm not going to get into the nuances of each of those points in this post, but they kind of form the foundation for a vision that I thought I was subscribing to when i joined farcaster which is something along the lines of enabling a world where social apps innovate to empower, inspire, help us coordinate and feel more free instead of enrage, desensitize, and exploit us.

But there are downsides to the current iteration of decentralized social networks that make me hesitant to recommend it to others:

  1. I’m unhappy with the current paradigm of online social because it aims to maximise the time you spend using it every day at all costs. Without a focus on rectifying this (or at least keeping the incentives in check) at the protocol or network level it feels like we're just rebuilding the existing flawed systems on crypto rails, which frankly feels like a waste of time.

  2. Network data is free for all. I am having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that everything I say and do, and the users I connect with on farcaster is available for everyone else to download and use as they please. This is a prime source of data for LLMs to train on, an excellent tool for marketers to profile you with, and the list of other potentially nefarious use cases is endless. I’m not sure this is an improvement on the web2 paradigm where only Zuck or Elon have that privilege.

  3. “Owning your audience” is a half truth. Measures that prevent others from deleting your data is only one part of this equation. In order to fully own your audience you also need some guarantee of distribution, which unfortunately exists almost entirely outside the control of the protocol. If your content is unfavourable to the opaque algorithms in every popular farcaster client, regardless of how many there are (they’re all optimizing for the same thing), people will not see it even if they follow you at the protocol level.

If not farcaster (or bluesky or mastodon or nostr), then what?

I'm not sure. At this stage I'm trying to understand if there is anything salvageable with the paradigm of social we find ourselves constantly replicating today which focuses on short form text/media, follows, and engagement. One thing I know for sure is that competing with addictive algorithms for attention is a losing game if you're not willing to fight fire with fire – and this is a big problem that we are going to have to adjust to on a fundamental level over the coming decades.

It almost feels like if you're going to build a social app that offers substance, minimizes noise, and doesn't treat users as the product then you're going to build for a very small user base that is deliberately opting out of the current social paradigm. Initially at least.