Automod announced they are shutting down due to upcoming channel related changes.

We’re sad to see John wind down Automod and we want to take this opportunity to talk about how Automod quickly became the leading channel management and moderation tool on Farcaster over the last few months — over 500 channels use it as of writing this.

Channel owners can use Automod to curate their feeds with 25+ rules to determine who is allowed to post what in channels, for example:

• Filter out casts containing hate speech

• Include casts from users holding membership tokens

• Require casts to include a photo

To do this, Automod needs real-time access to millions of casts as they come on to the Farcaster network and Neynar’s webhooks are a great fit. Instead of standing up to time-consuming and expensive infrastructure, Automod can subscribe to the specific channels its customers need. Webhooks aren’t just notifications either, they contain full cast, author, and embedded content metadata which is useful for processing moderation rules on casts fast.

When casts meet a channel's moderation criteria, the channel requires the moderator, @automod in this case, to like the cast. Automod uses Neynar’s signers and reaction APIs to do this, coupled with other integration points.

Validating rules to post in a Farcaster channel

A channel host starts by adding Automod as a moderator to a channel. Automod then allows the host to add numerous rules (e.g. follow a user or subscribe to a paragraph creator) that users must meet to post in the channel.

Automod uses Neynar webhooks to receive every incoming cast in a channel and then check against moderation rules. For valid posts, Automod likes the post using a Neynar signer.

Ensuring historical casts meet new criteria

If there are casts in a channel that were made before Automod was enabled, Automod allows the channel host to “sweep” such casts and check them against the new moderation rules.

This uses the Neynar channels feed API to get the 100 most recent posts and process them in the same manner as the webhooks.

Giving back control

Automod, when launched, greatly simplified the experience of launching and hosting a channel for creators. Creators set up the rules once and didn’t have to manually moderate their channel after that. It’s a good example of how decentralized social separates out control from the platform providers, to creators, to end users.

Although channels are changing and John is moving on from Automod to something else, it was a fantastic piece of rapid developer innovation, made possible on an open protocol. At Neynar, we expect more such innovation to happen and are excited to support developers building in this space. If we can help, please reach out to @rish or @manan on Farcaster.