I've been mulling it over in my head over and over again; what went wrong that could have gone right, and to just what extent the game was rigged from the start.
I have never felt more vindicated in considering animosity, trolling, bad faith, entitlement, and >(ab)users< more generally a threat to Cohost. Obviously Stripe is the bigger factor, but we should still be noting and studying the irony that this place succumbed to the same diseases that took out ye olde snouts.online and entire migrations to fediverse: the losing battle that is trying to maintain a social media website of any size day after day and year after year, when you are surrounded by enemies from within and without for no fucking reason. People who will openly wish harm on you and anticipate the day you fail because you dared to build something good that's not perfect.
Some are more hardened than others. But this is not an experience that the human psyche was built to endure. (Something something panopticon.) It does not surprise me in the least that it took its toll especially rough on people who personally felt the need for this kind of platform, one that aggressively protects its users to the point of restriction (in visibility more than functionality), while pushing back against outside demands for even more restriction, the logical conclusion of which is a platform for nobody.
Consider how things that Jae and Kara, two trans women, have said, especially regarding the immense pressure of being demonized for every decision and every delay, have themselves been picked apart by the mob. Consider the feeling of people you saw as peers, that you are trying to build something for and help and serve and protect, suddenly turn to call you (quoting from an early Cohost opponent) "tankie suicide-baiting pedophiles" because you didn't think about one small part of the content policy hard enough and decided not to ban an edgy slogan against Hitler and his fans- even if you were wrong.
Study the autopsy of a death by toxicity. Because...
It will kill again.
It will kill small FOSS projects. It will kill big FOSS projects. It will kill Fediverse instances. It will kill projects like this one. It will kill organizations and friend groups that have nothing to do with software or hardware or antisoftware.
There's no way to stop it, not really. All we can do is acknowledge its existence and insulate ourselves from its material repercussions and overly optimistic emotional expectations of The Public or our naivete regarding "maybe it'll go away" or how impossible it is to deal with. All we can do is build ourselves stronger and more stubborn, and build what we make more resistant to schisms, attacks, naysayers and other nonsense, and not build things that rely on everyone ever believing in them. If we can build something that somehow never generates any controversy directed towards the creators, all the better, but I don't count on that happening.
