I have a theory that almost every benign cultural clash about cohost is about what i like to call the Post Meat, and what individual users determine as Post Meat.
Post Meat is the stuff in posts that is worthwhile to imbibe. It is the Meat of the Posts. It's the stuff you go to a feed and want to see. you want to see the Meat.
You want to see the original content that your friends post, or that your friends think is funny or worthwhile or whatever. An original post or a repost of something that you haven't seen before is generally, universally considered Post Meat.
But beyond that it varies. In a more "inclusive" posting culture (e.g. Tumblr) my general feeling was that the Post Meat encompassed any original or new material. So that would be both original posts, reposts I hadn't seen before, but also reposts that added commentary in the tags, or ask replies. Yes, you might get some doubles in there, but it was worth it because there was still meat on those posts! The Asks + Replies, the little jokes in tags, all those were Post Meat.
But for folks more accustomed to Twitter or more algorithmically-friendly feeds, most of those "smarter feeds" would hide duplicate material. Seeing 15 of your friends RT the same post was not terribly helpful on Twitter, since that would provide very little Post Meat, so Twitter would generally hide that material. In this more "meat-exclusive" posting culture, anything that was not "true original material" is less desired than true original Posts.
Ultimately it's a question of taste!! I don't think this is a massive Discourse thing, and I'm honestly kind of surprised that people are taking it as such. It really feels like a cultural clash thing more than anything else. Overall I'm just glad cohost is offering tools to change your personal experience on the site, though I think it's clear where my bias lies on this particular concern
this of course implies an equally powerful but as of yet untheorized counterpart to Posting Meat 🥩:
Posting Candy 🍬.
