I've been working on several little projects - one of which is trying to set up my own node and help with others' nodes on the website league - and being in proximity to it all, seeing folks talk about cohost in retrospective, what it did right, what went wrong, and all the little conscious design choices that went into creating it... make me appreciate it a lot more, which kinda makes it all the more sad that it's disappearing.
Modern social media often feels like it's just trying to replicate what the successful sites do. It often feels like Mastodon is trying to be Twitter 2 with its design/functionality decisions. Bluesky basically is Twitter 2. Cohost... tried to do something different. A lot of thought went into how to make it friendlier, or at least non-toxic, and it shows as I go back to other spaces in attempts to replace what it served as for me, and working with others in modifying other software to try and make it feel more like how this place did. Hearing people talk about all the conscious choices made, discovering all the various numbers and Engagement Boosting Feeds that need to be lopped off of various frontends and backends...
There were mistakes made with this site, there were choices that could've been better. I haven't agreed with every moderation decision, I've not been able to argue with the reason some folks have left. But... this place was made with love, a lot of conscious thought went into "how can we make this good for the user," and the people who put it together worked their collective asses off until they couldn't anymore. I feel that's shone through a lot more to me recently.
But, nothing good can stay. All sites must close at one point or another - it's just disappointing this one was only around for 2 years and change. But... I don't think it's dead. Only the software is, its tiny team of developers and maintainers finally getting a break. The ideas that brought it to life are still very much so alive - both in how I see people spinning up their own personal websites and pulling together everyone's RSS feeds into a timeline of its own, to the weague and its attempts to try to take the thoughtful design philosophies of Cohost and apply it to a federated space.
Cohost the software may be gone, but I don't think Cohost the idea will ever die.