I'm having mixed feelings about this. On the one hand it was a great alternative to Tumblr, on the other hand it never reached the convenient user experience and never had the same variety of options as Tumblr. Consequently I made an account, posted a few things and left.
I would love a non-corporate alternative to Tumblr. I am very active on Mastodon and if it had the formatting/layout options Tumblr has, I would migrate completely.
Hoooh boy do I have some thoughts about Cohost shutting down.
I've been working on this post for a few days, letting thoughts simmer enough to be presentable enough, so… here goes something!
Yeah, I'm sad about that. Not surprised that it happened, but still sad. Cohost had a good philosophy behind it, wanting to build a social media platform without much of the usual trappings, and I appreciate all the work its creators, Anti-Software Software Club, put in to make that philosophy real. And it was real, if only for a couple of years. I'm so glad my art found an audience there, even getting a few lovely comments. I feel bad for everyone who set up shop there who now has to scramble towards other platforms to host their stuff on. I can understand why some people decided they were finished with social media after the site announced they were gonna shut down at the end of 2024.
I really wish Cohost succeeded as a social media platform.
And I will miss it.
All that said… (here come the controversial takes)
I don't hold much sympathy for its staff and ASSC. It really felt like they had no business sense nor did they want to have any business sense. That showed especially in how unprofessional some of their financial updates - and lack thereof on occasion - were. Casually saying "oops I forgot to do the update for X month" despite further funding for the site hinging on regular posting of said updates, acting all "we're your friends!!!" at times, and so on. Then there were things like the eggbux debacle, ASSC thinking they were gonna turn Cohost into a Patreon competitor without having the knowledge or resources to do that, Stripe policies aside. I'm aware that was one of ASSC's original goals for the platform, but still. I gotta factor in some of the monumental moderation fails the platform's had, including the Nazi incident. Their policies regarding generative "AI" - seriously, not blanket banning generative "AI" was asking for trouble. Oh, and an aura of negativity and toxic positivity that pervaded the place partially because of that inadequate moderation, and partially because that's what Cohost's culture was like to an extent. Still, my Discord server has more moderators than Cohost ever had - three, myself included, compared to one. That's comparing a platform with about 130 users (I'd say 12-15 of them are active and posting on the server) as of the time I'm writing this against a platform with over 25,000 users at the time of the shutdown announcement.
This might seem harsh considering Cohost's staff were known users and public faces there. I don't know any of them personally. I don't wanna pretend like I do. But I also don't wanna pretend like ASSC could do no wrong and Cohost was some heavenly paradise. One of the most popular posts on the site in its final months, at least regarding the number of comments and responses to it, was "Cohost So White", a lengthy timeline detailing some of the most notable moderation fails and racist incidents that've occurred on the site over its history. Much of that negativity I mentioned earlier stemmed from how bigoted and racist chunks of the userbase could be - and the times that was left unchecked until staff was bullied into removing offending posts and banning the people behind them. Remember the Nazi incident I mentioned earlier?
In short, a Nazi made a Cohost account to stalk and harass a Jewish person there. The Jewish person tried reporting the account, posting evidence of the Nazi's behavior off-site, and Cohost staff… did nothing about it initially because "they've done nothing wrong on Cohost so far" or words to that effect, causing the Jewish person (among others) to almost leave Cohost. Staff was then bullied into banning the Nazi and afterwards said things like "we're bound to screw up on moderation decisions every now and again". There's more to the Nazi incident than that, but I don't want this post to be entirely about that. Still, I get it. Moderation is tricky. People make mistakes. But that was an egregious moderation failure that should never have happened.
Disregarding all that, Cohost had this feeling of a group of friends creating a social media platform for themselves, their friends, and friends of friends, but it never grew out of that hobbyist mindset. Cohost felt like a very anti-social place more often than not. Discoverability was always spotty. Tag shotgunning was common especially for artists like me wanting to have as much reach as possible. The only major attempt to make discoverability better IMO, tag synonyms, came in too late to be relevant. Needed and welcomed, but still. Same for certain changes to moderation policies - the "missing stair" policy and so on, even if I feared they could've been weaponized against fair and civil criticism of the platform.
This is a personal thing, but I never gelled with the site's culture. I was mainly there to post my art; the site being NSFW/18+ friendly was a huge reason why I joined, and to its credit, Cohost never lost that particular quality throughout its existence. I didn't interact with people much there, and venturing outside of my carefully-curated feeds, both main and bookmarked, could feel as draining as doomscrolling on Twitter. Almost like Twitter's negativity sort of migrated over to Cohost and became integrated into Cohost's culture. Again, I'm not saying the entire platform was like that, just that the negativity sometimes drowned out all the shitposts and CSS crimes and whatnot.
Don't get me wrong. Cohost shutting down is a loss for the Internet as a whole for reasons I explained up top. I'll always appreciate it for what it tried to do and all the good it managed to do over the time it existed. I don't wanna walk away feeling like I'm blindly bashing on it with a sledgehammer or, worse, celebrating its downfall with a bag of popcorn in hand. It's just… Things could've and should've been so much better. There were more than enough misgivings on ASSC's behalf that didn't help matters. That's really why I'm sad yet not surprised about Cohost shutting down. Cohost deserved better. Much better.
The reason why I've been so critical about Cohost is… I give a shit. It's clear I'm passionate enough about Cohost to say what I said here. I genuinely wanted things to be better there. If I truly didn't care, this post wouldn't exist, and it's possible I never would've given Cohost a chance in the first place. Regardless, the fact that so, so, SO many people are sad about it shutting down speaks volumes. I enjoyed my time there despite all its faults, but that doesn't mean I could act as if those faults didn't exist. My personal experiences with Cohost weren't everyone's personal experiences.
I'm aware that places like Pillowfort have some of the same problems Cohost had, namely an uncertain financial and long-term future. It's why Pillowfort and other small platforms need support now more than ever, and I'm glad to see that some of Cohost's userbase has migrated over to Pillowfort. Unless you're gonna bail on social media entirely after Cohost shuts down (again, I don't blame you for wanting to do that at this point), you're best off diversifying where you post, especially if you're an artist and/or a writer. If you can spare the money, you should send a few bucks towards these smaller platforms to help keep them afloat. At any moment, that smaller platform you've made a home on can just… shut down one day, planned or not.
I have never used tumblr before but I'm here now to try to continue following some artists I like from cohost as we approach the shutdown. What's up. I am a gay dog. Woof and bark, awoo even
