RunawayDanish

@RunawayDanish

Local Alien Degenerate opens blog

he/she/they
linktr.ee/runawaydanish

Time Elapses. The Past Recedes. Do you do the Dinosaur?

Furry artist from the internet, ancient and seasoned at the eon-spanning age of 32. I've been around on Furaffinity.net forever, watch me there too, maybe consider donating dosh to me over on kofi or SubscribeStar, I am unemployable.

All characters are over 18, by the by, and you should be too to visit this page.

PS: A random SFW account, no relation to me, of course.

RunawayDanish @RunawayDanish3/18/2024, 4:52 PM

I don't really care to roll out Queer Theory right now, just don't buy into this level of centralization ya'll.

I don't want this to be a call-out post, this is probably just one of many similarly-styled calls to action to support Cohost, it's fine, this is fine actually. I think OP is genuinely hopeful things are going to work out, and that's not the worst thing ever. However, you probably should not be so quick to go balls-deep into this idea of a full month of exclusive posting to Cohost the fruits of your labor, and the why is worth your time.

Small Update on Mar 18th before end of day: Investigating the specifics of what is and is not a COOP in the United States has made Washington State Law an odd anomaly. Cohost... has a few anomalous traits that we might need real law people to get into.

In Basic Terms:
An Article has been penned recently about Cohost's dismal financial state of affairs^[1], one I would recommend. The author estimated that around 2022 June, that Cohost/ASSC was already about $500,000 in the red and with the more recent updates in mind I do not think Cohost will last six whole months. When the Cohost Staff were looking at "Early April" as a shut-down date^[2], they had less than six whole weeks. I just don't see the math here.

I want people to also Consider that ASSC's mission statement^[3], structure as a company, and investment approach while phrased as more indie are actually just... traditional. They're not a Coop, ASSC is a 3-founder LLC^[4]. They're not a Non-Profit, they are a "Not For Profit" Company^[5], aka, a for-profit company that is eating costs but really doesn't have a public-service agenda. They're not free of the traditional hazards of funding pitfalls, they literally signed away the company's IP and code base to their principle benefactor and then somehow neglected affairs so badly the benefactor went radio silent for an entire month!? How do they expect $20k in funds to stretch six months^[6]? I do want to keep that in mind, they list 'offers' which sounds like an acquisition and there's more chatter in their last update that suggests a pivot to reality. We'll see.

But let's assess the situation in terms of responsible business practices. I have three words to summate the above: Suspicious. Idiotic. Misleading. I have my opinion laid out with I think reasonable citations above, below is what I personally have concluded for myself. You might find that indeed, looking into Archival Tools provided by Cohost community members^[7] might in fact be a good idea. Thanks to CaffeinatedOtter and MiserablePileOfWords, who worked on this tool that integrates with Cohost.py; full disclosure they're two fellow short-story writers I really like.

Citations, Prescriptions, and more below the break.

What I think you should do:

Save local copies of everything. There is a work-in-progress archival tool being developed that makes use of the cohost.py uh... github? The contributions are from two Cohost Writers I really like who basically put everything together as our little patch of blogs all expressed a degree of concern. You can also just... copy+paste text, download the images, and throw everything into a LibreOffice / Microsoft Word / etc document then save them with a Post Title file name.
Begin external networking. Discord, Steam, email lists, your 20 year old IRC; literally anything is better than nothing here. If you have favorite people in particular that you would like to contact, you should do so via a comment on one of their posts or the askbox feature. I would recommend leaving your askbox open so people can send contact info back to you.
Hope into one hand, de-risk into another. If it isn't obvious I'm posting this to Cohost because I happen to like Cohost, it's something that I wish we had more of and I have to stress that the part that upsets me the most is that things might not work out. But I was there when Yahoo flipped that switch on Tumblr in late 2018... Social Media platforms are full of expense and compromise. They also fail all the time.
Begin looking into alternatives, if you can find them. I'm not sure where to host my academic-stylized essays about furry pornography nor where to put my lewd but action packed Ratgirl Isekai writing project! I don't think I have a place to go where I can host the content and get feedback that I want that won't at some point require a subscription, up-front self hosting costs, or a very fucking wonky collection of links on other websites pointing to a host.
Post as usual, include your contact info. This is pretty obvious, you should be thinking about the future as undecided and you should plan accordingly. Six months without any change could mean Cohost is still gone, heck it could still be gone in April! The company must be in debt of some kind, and it by cursory estimate by our first citation doesn't look good, so you know.
Don't get your hopes up too high. There's reason for you to be both skeptical and try to measure your personal risk a little bit here, and I think that's healthy. Terminal Cancer patients tend to do better when they are at best cautiously optimistic^[8], soberly aware of the risks and likeliness of the bad outcome. In clinical psychology we like to try to assess and build resiliency to stress and bad outcomes over mere positive thinking, worth a consideration.

Decentralize your online alias, TODAY.

Nowhere is by us. Nowhere is for us.

...because web hosting depends on people with money who must play into systems of profit-seeking and legal constraints that are not compatible with Queer community. Next time, let's think more seriously on actual non-profit structures for our critical community infrastructure. PS, find me here: click me^[9]

Citations included as hyperlinks below.
[1] Lori's Blog -- Cohost Financials
[2] Cohost Staff Blog -- March 2024 Financial Update
[3] Anti Software Software Club -- Home Page & Manifesto
[4] Lopes Law LLC -- Cooperatives vs LLCs: Setting Up Your Business
[5] Investopedia -- Not For Profit: Definitions and What It Means for Taxes
[6] Cohost Staff Blog -- End-of-Week Financial Update Update
[7] CaffeinatedOtter & MiserablePileOfWords -- Archival Tool for use with Cohost.py
[8] American Cancer Society Journals -- Optimism and Survival in Lung Carcinoma Patients
[9] Linktree -- When you can find ME (runawaydanish)

#The Cohost Global Feed #cohost #cohost.py #archival tools #web archival #internet culture #business #social media #web 2.0 collapse #Queer Topics #plan your disaster accordingly #financial crises of small websites #bad planning #decentralization

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in reply to @RunawayDanish's post:

walking mirage @atomicthumbs3/18/2024, 6:58 PM

They're not a Coop, ASSC is a 3-founder LLC[4].

just FYI, that article only applies in states where there is an actual cooperative form that a business can be incorporated under. there isn't one in washington state; any corporation can be governed as a cooperative, and ASSC is worker-owned and governed as a cooperative, with each employee who's worked more than a year a co-owner with an equal share. kaara got a share after working for a year

RunawayDanish @RunawayDanish3/18/2024, 7:23 PM

In some behind the scenes chatter from the week, there was some confusion as to if or if not the fourth staff add actually got a share, so this helps. I think it deserves to be said, filing as a LLC is mostly going to dictate tax filing, debt, and liability rules for stakeholders and odds are good my tone is implying more than is described so it'll get reworked for a more specific point.

I think those details about governing a company and how that isn't always it's structure under law are worthwhile distinctions to add. The thing that bothers me is that what people think a coop is and what the actual animal looks like afield can differ sharply. I certainly have had a few unproductive conversations about this topic already which is in some cases really a lot of ear plugging about what ASSC has as inconsistent messaging; transparency playbooks are out there, at any rate.

Most people aren't as sensitive to the structural arguments I get fixated on, half the time they only show up in courtrooms after smoke has cleared. Lots of unspoken little technicalities provide opaqueness where I think personally it is not helpful for messaging. Edits to follow just en case no one reads comments, thanks.

roy @corhocysen3/18/2024, 7:30 PM

reading these posts, idk that you should be criticising other people's communication, to be honest. assuming you're saying what i think you are, at least, which is not an entirely safe assumption on my part.

RunawayDanish @RunawayDanish3/18/2024, 7:50 PM

I don't always have the best mental organization, so that's fair. I also am trying to shoot very hard for a more neutral tone today as unlike the Cohost Organization, which is distinct in motivations and actions from its constituent employee/stakeholders; the post begins with another Cohost poster's content excerpted.

Calling my reaction to Cohost's situation anything but furious is definitely not right, I am pissed. This site's problems are worth correction, what it accomplishes as a platform is worth saving, and I think genuinely the staff are trying to do their best with what they know -- but what they know seems insufficient in my opinion.

End of day, it's an opinion and I am trying to qualify it. I have no decision making power and the best I can do is shout loudly and hope someone takes notice. If you're confused about my agenda or thesis, that's my own fault for sucking as a communicator. lol

walking mirage @atomicthumbs3/18/2024, 9:44 PM

behind the scenes chatter?

RunawayDanish @RunawayDanish3/19/2024, 3:19 AM

Yeah sorry about the shorthand, meant my talking with friends / seeing other people in my general sphere discuss the things on. Not behind the scenes at Cohost idk what folks affiliated with the project are doing.

💤🌵🤖@cactus3/19/2024, 12:01 AM

worker-owned co-ops that are legally organized as LLCs are not uncommon even in states that have a separate corporate structure for cooperatives, because you can wind up in situations where century-old state laws define the only valid procedure for adding new members as something that doesn't really work well for your specific needs. for instance, setting up as an LLC even when a cooperative was an option instead is specifically mentioned in Darius Kazemi's work with Feel Train.

RunawayDanish @RunawayDanish3/19/2024, 3:22 AM

Washington State's history here might be interesting but it looks more like a convenience clause was drafted. Having a gander at the specifics here still makes it an odd permutation that required the usual of finding someone who was in that patchwork area. Still haven't edited the post as mentioned, haven't had time to do the research and revise appropriately.

lori @lori3/18/2024, 8:34 PM

The best thing you can do online is duplicate the shit out of your posts. A site doesn't even have to close, it can have a catastrophic backup failure or whatever. Plus you reach more audiences posting everywhere. If you're posting about your lunch then sure but if you're posting long form thoughts or your art or whatever spread that shit out.

@sps3/19/2024, 1:22 PM

regarding the cohost python module, that github repo is just a place where the source lives. when you type pip install cohost, you're installing the cohost python module from the python package index (PyPI). a more typical way of referring to it (as opposed to 'the cohost.py github) would be 'the cohost python module' or, with sufficient context, just 'the cohost module'.