Noel B

@NoelBWrites

they/them
ko-fi.com/noelb

I like writing and writing byproducts
🧉💜✨🌹

Noel B @NoelBWrites3/12/2024, 10:29 PM

claireitin @claireitin

Bruno Dias @bruno3/12/2024, 1:24 PM

You're welcome to think Cohost's design is hostile to whatever you want to get out of social media but it's kind of dumb and, at the present juncture, fairly assholish to call the developers 'naive' by saying they should have built something more similar to some other social media platform that is also, at present, wildly unprofitable (they all are!)

Anschel @Anschel3/12/2024, 1:33 PM

Yeah the fact is that every social media platform is unprofitable right now. The only real exception is Meta, but they're not making money from social media per se

Cliff 🦖 Pervocracy @pervocracy3/12/2024, 4:39 PM

I think that even if you're not a right-winger there's a tendency to harbor some "get woke go broke" intuitions about Cohost, like they try too hard to be pure and they should have wallpapered the site with ads and they should have encouraged Skinner-box addiction dynamics and they should have promised not to moderate Free Speech and they should have sucked up to corporate sponsors and then they'd be as financially successful as...

Twitter or Tumblr?

well that's where that line of reasoning breaks down

#cohost meta

Anschel @Anschel3/12/2024, 4:45 PM

There's an impressive trick right-wing ideas have played, where they define themselves as "tough but practical" and we are in such a rush to point out that "tough" is actually "evil" that we unconsciously concede the point on "practical"

Cliff 🦖 Pervocracy @pervocracy3/12/2024, 5:22 PM

This is so, extremely, ridiculously true, and it even pervades our historical lens on the most evil right-wing ideas in history. The idea that fascism is "brutally efficient" is great for thought experiments, narrative tension, and gameplay balance--with the drawback of being completely untrue.

"Societies must balance their needs between social justice and economic prosperity" has never actually been true, it's just a way to make resistance to social justice sound like something smart and complicated that Serious Grownups would do as a Reluctant Sacrifice.

Anyway. I don't know the future of Cohost but I do know that the typical user in here is much more committed to the success of the site, more personally aligned with its goals, than on any other social media I've used. I have vastly more hope in that getting us through--people are practically begging for more ways to give the site money--than I would if Cohost started running crypto ads and algorithmic outrage bait.

#politics #cohost meta

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in reply to @bruno's post:

Mr. Hands @mrhands3/12/2024, 1:31 PM

Why I love Cohost, and why it should continue to exist, is that I have no idea what you're talking about. I haven't seen anything like that on my feed.

JcDent @JcDent3/12/2024, 2:49 PM

I have seen some, but I just naturally navigate towards Things That Will Make Me Feel Bad

JP @vectorpoem3/12/2024, 4:54 PM

no see, the only real high ground is to make a big mess of an open source project that limits the pool of people who can create communities to "people who know how to use Docker"

Bruno Dias @bruno3/12/2024, 4:59 PM

Truly the most evil option. Nobody who knows how to use Docker should be allowed to talk to anyone,

Takel @takelgryph3/12/2024, 6:05 PM

An exception can and should be made for Ian Coldwater, but otherwise you're probably right.

mike cook @mtrc3/12/2024, 5:46 PM

nothing on the internet lasts forever, and whatever happens to cohost, whenever it happens, i'm really glad someone tried to do this thing. i didn't know how much i would enjoy it! it reminded me of things, introduced me to people, helped me understand what i like and don't like about the internet. what's the point in not trying new things, even if it doesn't always work out.

in reply to @pervocracy's post:

Onnes @onnes3/12/2024, 4:56 PM

What's bugged me is the sheer amount of misinformation I've seen spread about the finances of the site. I can't tell if people are pretending to not know the difference between salary and payroll or are going into adulthood very confused.

Bruno Dias @bruno3/12/2024, 5:00 PM

I guarantee a good chunk of people don’t know the difference between salary and payroll

in reply to @Anschel's post:

Amagire @amagire3/12/2024, 4:50 PM

this is annoyingly true of almost all right-wing arguments about everything: the hidden prong that makes otherwise well-meaning leftists concede ground that doesn't need concession. like "they're letting kids as young as 10 have gender hormones and surgeries! they're putting litterboxes in schools for children who identify as cats!", responding (reasonably) with "no they aren't" implies "we agree those things would be bad"

Anschel @Anschel3/12/2024, 4:53 PM

Hard agree. This is a tactic that they use a lot and it works very well

chaos gf @zip3/12/2024, 11:52 PM

everyone constantly falls for this by saying trans women don't have an advantage in sports instead of saying all women should be able to participate in sports as women

Cliff 🦖 Pervocracy @pervocracy3/13/2024, 4:56 PM

oh SERIOUSLY

if I never see another argument that's like "don't worry, trans women never win at sports"

is that, like... a promise to the cis world? does it mean that if a trans woman ever does win a major competition we'll be "proven wrong" and have to renegotiate the issue? will we be angry at her for not throwing the game to support the Cause? it goes ugly places.

Heatherhorns In: The Adventure of the Lost Shipwreck @Heatherhorns3/12/2024, 5:09 PM

I've been seeing so many self-satisfied takes on mastodon like "what did they think would happen??" and I can't help but feel these would be the same people who would scoff over every decision because it's not enlightened enough*

But regardless.
I'm sorry if Cohost went bust trying to pursue what they wanted to see in the world. Isn't the whole idea that they're NOT doing the shit to encourage addiction? Maybe some folks in our general lefty, terminally-online circles haven't ever been made aware that being profitable is incredibly at odds with moral choices sometimes.

*aside from a huge messy exception i will not get into but will at least acknowledge