Cohost - Final Thoughts

I am going to miss cohost.

It was not perfect. It had a bad racism problem. The staff failed to protect people of color on the website. My white privilege shielded me from seeing much of that, so I was not aware until it was too late nearly every time. The anti-discovery design of the website, while I think was ultimately good, also did not help with awareness of those cultural problems.

At the same time, it was a place of healing for me. It allowed me to break out of some of the more toxic mindsets that Twitter had instilled in me. I met many wonderful people. I was encouraged to get back into writing.

For me, the experience was wonderful.

For others, the experience sucked.

That's hard to reconcile.

But the reality is that both are true, and both are worth keeping in mind.

EDITED TO CLARIFY 2024-10-13 - this next section is specifically in relation to hostility that was directed towards staff in their slowness of implementing particular features. you can basically think of this part as "disabled person frustrated at ableism directed at disabled people by other disabled people". i think the broad ideas may apply to other areas as well, but also there needs to be a lot of emphasis on "hold people accountable when they fuck up" in addition to the "don't assume bad faith" that i talk about here; i still stand by my frustration at how people handled some of this however.

There was an ongoing issue (not related to the racism issues) of people expecting perfection from a staff of 4 people, several of whom are disabled in ways that slows down their ability to work on the site. Many of the criticisms people had were valid, but expressed in vitriolic ways that reminded me of the toxicity of Twitter and even Tumblr.

I don't want to argue in favor of respectability politics. That's horse shit. But unfortunately I've seen people conflate my stance with respectability politics and that's frustrating. What I do wish is that more people would assume good faith when somebody makes a mistake or fails. They should still be held to account, but... I believe people are inherently good, if flawed. Mistakes will be made, and while those should be held to account and corrected, it frustrates me to see people not at least assume good faith.

The hostility that emerges from a failure to assume good faith makes it terrifying to even try. I know I have my own bullshit I need to unlearn. But when less than perfection is responded to with marking you "evil" or "persona non grata", it makes me want to just hide away and not interact at all for fear of unintentionally harming others, because one strike and I'm out. I don't think this is uncommon or even unreasonable. And that's not conducive to growth and becoming a better person.

Those who had to leave the website because it did not have necessary accessibility features fast enough or because moderation failed you, I am truly sorry. You deserved better. I wish these problems had been solved, and solved in a timely manner.

But I cannot bury the fact that I am a healthier, better person now than I was two years ago because of cohost. I don't want to pretend the good didn't happen. I don't want to ignore the harm caused to others. Shit's complicated. That's life. But we can and should strive to fix problems when they arise. Not just give up and throw it all out.

I think cohost was ultimately good. At least, it was better than most social media. Even where it failed to serve its community, I think it failed less than most social media websites with billions of dollars in backing and hundreds to thousands of employees. And cohost did that with an impossible funding model and a very small staff. That is respectable, even as at the same time, staff failed.

I'm going to be having complicated feelings about cohost for a good while I think. But for me, it was a positive experience. I value that. I only wish it were more positive for others as well.