A late eulogy to cohost, I guess
I've been dragging my feet around to write about cohost for a year now, but decided to finally get to it, since it's the 1-year anniversary of it closing down.
So, cohost was a cool idea: a social network with a chronological timeline, no algorithms, no statistics of any kind (no engagement, number of followers, etc), and good "social" privacy (nobody could see who you followed, there was no indication of who followed you). It was, to be honest, very liberating, and probably the first social network in a while where I didn't try to be as anonymous as in other places (where only those who knew me knew who I was). Adding to that, posts could be long or short-form (like Tumblr), accepted CSS and HTML besides Markdown, reposts showed below the original post, and it had a proper (and simple) commentary system akin to blogs.
It was, honestly, a perfect way of posting.
It was the first social network I got in without knowing anyone, and still made a few online friends. It was also the first time I wrote at length about localization and people replied with interest, a lot of times even adding more to the conversation. The vibes were overall very pleasant, a result, I guess, of not having site-wide algorithms or posts, meaning it was very hard to generate ragebait, or even get "traction" from people who weren't interested in what you were doing. On cohost, most of the time you interacted only with what you really wanted to interact.
Now, the issues cohost faced were, mostly, due to the nature of how social networks work: moderation is hard and monetization is hard. And even without any of the social network trappings other places have, it was noticeable that some users were more popular than others due to the amount of times their posts would cross your timeline.
The bad part about cohost was that, despite being run and populated by progressive and open-minded people, it was "too white", a descriptor that I think fits well. Minorities saying "this is offensive" and white people instantly going "no, it's not" shows that some still had a lot of growing to do in analyzing their own biases — and maybe how they saw themselves. Sealioning was very common in these cases, and the responses were of the kind "maybe don't post things that can get you harassed", which is... I mean, c'mon. In cany case, I've seen people leaving the network or posting less because of that.
Maybe, if cohost were able to overcome its financial difficulties, things could've gotten better, who knows. In any case, I still have a mostly-positive view of this "little" experiment. It helped me get off other social networks and improve my mental health a bit by not having the algorithm looming in constantly, and I did get to chat and know cool people (and even fellow localizers, which I never expected).
So, yeah, I miss cohost, it reminded me a bit of the old internet and its unrealized potential of how online interaction could be.