> Very recently Farcaster redefined how channels work, essentially drawing new guidelines. Time will tell if these changes are for the better. One certainty is that the existing communities are writing on a new set of lines, metaphorically speaking. Farcaster isn't the only app that did this. X also "repurposed" their Bluechecks as a "Paid user" badge. I gotta say, I always find it somewhat awkward if the same feature is repurposed for something else and I can't really understand why its being done. On X, for example, for a while, the new Bluecheck confused people who thought that Bluechecks were only for celebs. Now, of course, everyone knows that Bluechecks are a commodity for paying users, but that also means they're not perceived as scarce or valuable anymore either. So I'm not sure that swap was a wise product design decision altogether. Same for Warpcast channels. I've never used the new channels but I think it is fine for them to iterate on the primitive, but it is a bit awkward that they took one thing from users and gave them the same thing, but it works slightly different. For Warpcast in particular, however, that's the expected user experience. They're in the business of really trying to domesticate their user base into a more high engagement machine so that it pleases those who look at their stats page. Contrarily, I guess it would be quite challenging to find such a rude way of dealing with feature change at a software project that is collaboratively owned. User simply wouldn't allow it because their liberty would make their domestication impossible in the first place.
Fair. Farcaster and Warpcast have often reminded us they are not collaboratively owned, directly or indirectly. Do you think they could have simply launched a new feature?