it's interesting seeing my hypothesis about how an influx of new followers would create essentially a deadzone for interaction play out in real time.
i haven't checked my followers in a week or so and the actual numbers aren't really important, but i think i'm sitting at somewhere near where i was on tumblr, which is somewhat surprising given i joined tumblr in 2018 and cohost in 2022, but to be fair my announcements about leaving tumblr did have a pretty large audience.
i've definitely been getting a lot less interaction here, which is nice in some regards and bad in others (i.e. if i wanted to post art here or share coding stuff). i think it boils down to a combination of the bulk of my followers being new tumblr refugees who aren't using cohost much (i didn't either in my first year, but to be fair there were only around 10000 users at the time), and the fact that i haven't maybe been as active here as i would have on tumblr since i don't follow as many pages here (although i think i only followed around 280 there). i'm used to it by now, but i would also wager that the pagination is a sort of roadblock for new users. it's a very tired debate that i don't really have much to add to, but there should at least be an option to enable infinite pagination even if it's not the default. it's not the problem, infinite algorithmic feeds are (i'll be coding it in myself anyways but it would probably help the site's interaction if it was vanilla).
i'll definitely be sticking to cohost regardless since i at least do have a presence here and have zero interest in the fediverse at this time, but i think it's definitely fair to say that it could definitely streamline integration for new users without compromising the core themes of the site.
