This is only based on my personal experience with both sites, but it's easily noticeable how much worse my experience is on Twitter versus Cohost.
On cohost it's extremely easy to make sure posts I know I don't want to see never appear for me anywhere on the website, whether browsing through tags or my timeline (if they're tagged correctly) while being able to muffle other tags so I can prepare myself before engaging with content that I may want to read, but just need space to breathe and keep myself chill and comfortable while reading it.
As soon as I opened twitter it was a fucking minefield. Obvious troll-bait everywhere being QRT'd onto my timeline by people who are willingly taking the bait because it gets them engagement anyway, completely inflammatory and reductive comments about complex situations, people being QRT'd out of context repeatedly... it's all for engagement, and it just sucks. it's terrible. the general behavior influenced by Twitter's design is hostile, and creates an environment that feels radioactive after just a few seconds of scrolling.
Once I started using all of Cohost's easily accessible tools to curate my experience on the site, I've not had a problem like this. Sure, sometimes I feel uncomfortable, but I can prepare to feel uncomfortable and engage with those feelings productively rather than losing control of my emotions and falling into toxic behavior as a reaction to being made to feel uncomfortable without any easy prevention methods.
I can't recommend enough that everybody goes through the settings page and sets muffled and muted tags. Use the meatball menu and silence posts that you don't want to have to see again on your timeline. There are a lot of tools at your disposal to curate your experience.
It's not perfect, but no website is ever going to be. Cohost at least gives you the chance to curate your experience to a much more effective degree than any other social media platform i've used, and it's helped my mental health a buttload because of it. There are multiple posts I've seen where, had I seen it anywhere else I would have shared it with my own comments, but here I just think to myself "my opinion isn't really needed here" and let it slide from my attention. It's wild. This site is awesome.
(what do i even tag this btw, if i should at all? i'd tag it as "discourse" but im not really saying this to welcome commentary or anything, im just talking about my experience with social media lately and my appreciation for this site's unlikely yet effective existence. i dunno lol)
