It's time to stop being polite and start being real. Farcaster is a super cool open protocol, but Warpcast, the main client 95% of us use to engage with it, is a closed sandbox with a lot of unwritten rules and culture that you have to figure out to do well. 91% of you failed to figure it out and got a spam label and now you are invisible. No one see your tags. Only your followers see your casts. Few people see your replies. You feel ignored and don't know how to get out of this purgatory. You must understand why you got this label and how to avoid it in the future.
Spam vs. Spammy
We all know spam when we see it: viagra ads, a Nigerian prince who just needs a small favor, constant repetitive text. We, and algorithms, are pretty good at detecting this. But Warpcast isn't looking for Spam, they are looking for users who are being SPAMMY and this is a key difference. It's not about if you are a Bot or Not. It's not about proof of humanity. It's about if the algo thinks you are being spammy and labels you as such.
What does Warpcast consider "Spammy"?
This is the million dollar question. Here is the official cast about making spam labels public and the definition of Spam and Spammy behavior by the Warpcast team. The Github contains a JSON file of all the FIDS the team has labeled. At first release, the raw data set says: { likely_spammy_users: "236865", might_spammy_users: "200705", unlikely_spammy_users: "44054" } which means 91% of active users on Warpcast are labeled as spammy.

Note: The algorithm was run again on Jan 30, 2025 and the new numbers are:
{ likely_spammy_users: "242780", might_spammy_users: "198138", unlikely_spammy_users: "43778" }
~91% of casters are labeled as spammy.
From the Warpcast Team:
Warpcast's spam models predict the probability that an account might exhibit spammy behavior. Spam is defined as behavior that intentionally generates notifications for other users in a way that benefits the author and annoys users who receive them. Some examples include replying with generic llm generated responses, bulk following accounts, posting irrelevant or generally offensive responses to other people's posts. Spamminess is not related to whether an account is being controlled by a human. There are many bots that are not spammy and many humans that are.
Our models make these predictions based on the combination of a number of factors including the account's historical activity, social graph, message content and the moderation actions that other users have taken on their account. No single factor will get an account labelled as spam.
There isn't ONE single action you can do to be labeled as spam. It's a combination of many factors, but the above text is purposefully vague. If we know the exact mechanisms the team is using in their model, the spammers will learn to avoid them. The best way to see what the algo thinks is spam is to look at a sample of accounts that are not spammy and a sample that have spam labels.
I choose to look at the Top 100 OpenRank accounts by engagement, the Top 100 Organic FarScore (FarRank) aka Airstack accounts, the top 100 accounts by Neynar Score, and the top 500 accounts on the Warpcast Rewards Leaderboard. All of these data sets are publicly accessible and give us great insight. While the Warpcast Spam Algorithm is secret, these public data sets are a good approximation for high quality accounts and correlate highly with each other.
Do I have a spam label?
You can look up your FID directly in the GitHub JSON file linked above, or you can use one of these two frames on Warpcast:
Compez's Frame is beautifully designed and let's you check friend's spam labels as well. He tries to make it a little more user friendly by color coding your status, but his language does not match 1:1 with the JSON file in the GitHub causing some confusion on the timeline. Your goal is to see Green on his frame and be labeled as "Low Risk: Unlikely to engage in spammy behavior." Anything else means you have a Warpcast Spam Label.
MVR's frame is an exact pull from the Warpcast data. Level 2 means you are "unlikely spam". Level 1 or 0 is a Warpcast spam label.
How to Get out of Spam Jail
If you have a spam label you need to stop what you are doing immediately and completely change your behavior on Warpcast right now. Spend the next hour cleaning up your feed. Think of your personal feed as your Warpcast resume. Make it look good and cast differently going forward.
1. Stop Sharing Frames...Excessively
Most spammers feeds are full of frames. Allowance frames, game frames, whatever the new Farcaster meta is. Frames are fun and viral but you are overdoing it. If you didn't build it, don't share it. Oversharing frames looks Spammy. If you are casting mostly frames or casting the same frames everyday, you look spammy. Top Casters rarely cast frames*. When they do cast them, they usually write about why they chose to cast the frame and tell you why you should use it/try it out or give a shout out to the person who built it. They are sharing something cool, but they usually share it once and they are overly cautious in sharing. You can share a frame, but your profile should not be littered with them.
*The best way to see what the algo loves is to study the Warpcast Rewards Leaderboard and draw your own conclusions. Look at the Top 10 on any given day. Look back 7 days on their casts. How many frames did Top Casters share? (Spoiler alert: last week it was zero for most!)
V aka the CoFounder of Farcaster shared some clarifications: "Posting frames is not bad"
2. Stop Recasting, Start Quotecasting*
Most spammers feeds are also full of recasts with very little original content. Your feed needs to be 80% original content. When you hit the recast button 100 times a day, you look spammy. You can recast others cast, just not excessively.
Top casters quote cast. They add color, insight, or shout outs to the things they cast. They layer their own original content on top of the cast to make it more relevant to their own followers. They promote others, but with context.
V aka the CoFounder of Farcaster shared some clarifications: "Recasting is not bad"
3. Be Original
80 % of your timeline needs to be original content. Don't steal content from the web and post it as your own. If you do this in highly curated channels, Top Casters are going to block and mute you and NEVER interact with you. It's better to not cast at all than to cast slop. 20% of your casts can be quotes, recasts, and the occasional frame thrown in, but most of it must be unique on the network. Your home feed needs to be engaging and I need to be able to make a judgment call on you in one minute. When people look into your feed to decide to follow you, this is what they see. Make sure its good. Quality is key.
4. Don't Tag people who aren't your friends
If you have a spam label, people who don't follow you don't see your tags anyway. You are wasting your time. Do not cast a frame that tags people. Do not cast a top level cast and randomly tag people. The algorithm hates excessive tagging and punishes it swiftly.
Tag your friends all you want. But anyone who doesn't follow you is a stranger. Do not tag them. They don't see you tag and therefore don't reply. When they don't reply, you look even more Spammy.
5. Be a Reply Guy, but ONLY in Channels
If you see a cast on your home feed that doesn't have a channel tag and the person who casted it doesn't follow you, skip it. DO NOT REPLY to it. The person who casted it won't get a notification of your reply anyway. They most likely will never see it. Your reply is orphaned: it gets zero likes or comments and looks like SPAM.
You shouldn't engage with Top Casters who don't follow you back, unless you see them casting into a channel that you are also a member of. Engaging with them outside of channels will probably get you a spam label. It's not worth it to try to get their attention. Join their hypersub or a channel they moderate. Unfollow them. Do not engage with people who don't engage back.
But, the rules are different in channels. If you are a member of that channel, everyone will see your comment. You have an equal shot of being seen. Use this to your advantage. Find well moderated, well curated channels who are building community. Spend most of your time in these channels. Engage authentically with other members of the channel and slowly build your network. YOU CANNOT GET A SPAM LABEL PARTICIPATING IN CHANNELS. Lean into channels. Find topics you are interested in and contribute.
6. Don't use ChatGPT to fix your English
Many people with spam labels are non native English speakers. Many use Chat GPT and other AI tools to "fix" their English. Do NOT do this. It makes you sound like an LLM Bot. It's way better to say something in English and also say it in your native language to give English speakers a heads up that you aren't a native speaker. I don't care that your English isn't perfect. I care that you are genuine. If people think you are am LLM bot, they will ignore you. If they are unsure, they will ignore you. When people ignore you and your comments are orphaned with no engagement, you look like SPAM.
7. Don't reply with emojis, gms, or other internet speak
When interacting with a stranger on Warpcast (aka someone who doesn't follow you), you need to use full sentences. gm, hi ser, and random emojis look like spam and are not appropriate. Do this with your friends (aka people who follow you) not with everyone else. Automated accounts engage in this behavior, so most casters ignore them. The more your are ignored, the more you look like spam. It's better to not reply at all than to reply with low level slop. Do not attach some random photo or some AI generated nonsense to a reply to stand out. This just makes you look even more like a bot, and everyone will ignore you. When no one engages with you, the algorithm thinks you are spam.
What now?
The spam algorithm runs weekly (I don't know what day/when). If you change today, maybe in a month you will be re-labeled. We don't know. This is the first time the labels have been made public, but all hope it not lost. Change now and hope for the best. You can also create a new account and start over following these rules.
There is a small chance you are labeled incorrectly. The algorithm is far from perfect. If you believe you haven't done any of the above and shouldn't have this label, get a Farcaster friend who is willing to stake their reputation on this and have them plead your case to the Warpcast team. Remember, the Warpcast team won't see your tags or comments because you have a spam label.
If you want to participate in Warpcast Rewards, you have to avoid a Spam Label. More developers are going to take these labels into account over the next few months, so it's important to do everything you can to stay in the god graces of the algorithm.
