i'm sure this has been observed before by people who articulated it better than i'm about to, but the decision not to give us numbers on likes/follows/shares here is so incredibly good.
even when you engage with this website in the least healthy possible way and count your engagements on a post (which, i have done, because i have adhd and a little trash mammal goblin brain. i am working on deprogramming that), the act of counting and processing each individual name in your notifications tab humanizes them in a way that gets lost when you're just looking at a number. it forces you to confront what it actually means that 5 people enjoyed the thing you posted. forces you to acknowledge each of those 5 people as people. insane how different and how much healthier it is to be here
this this this this this
Every single time I've talked about this platform beyond just "I saw a thing on Cohost today," this is the EXACT point I make about why I like it so much. It's incredible how much an "engagement"-based site like Twitter can suck the humanity out of something as simple as liking someone's art.
Going one step further, I'm trying to be more active in at least one Discord group. I brought up that I worked on Frogsong, and someone said "oh shit, that's neat." And that meant INFINITELY MORE to me than ANY like or comment ever has. It was just one (1) person, but it was a HUMAN BEING, not a random username or an avatar or something.
Cohost is an attempt to take social media's "follow a person and see their content" model and making the interaction matter more than the actual content. It's refreshing, it's humanizing, and it's more of a "community" than any other platform1 I've ever seen.
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With the exception of forums, of course, but that's building a community around an idea, rather than just reaching out to each other. Also Cohost reminds me a lot of forums anyway, because you just Post and see if people Respond.