(This full version is replicated below since there's a lot of linkbacks to folks here: I tried my best to capture their new homes, if any.)

I've really loved my time on cohost.

I was never too attached to Tumblr or Twitter, but I love cohost very much. Lots of people here seem to share similar ideas around online degrowth. Degrowth as it pertains to economics is a critique on capitalism. Simply put, focus on economic growth causes ecological damage and is unnecessary to human wellness.

Online degrowth, whether that's through personal sites, smallweb, indieweb, the Fediverse—seems to be picking up similar criticisms of the sheer amount of capitalist garbage that gets in between us.

Some of us are artists, tired of the constant pressure to have an audience or produce content that drives us to be miserable while hanging desperately on to tips, monthly subscribers and GoFundMe campaigns to cover basic expenses.

Some of us are alternative folks online who are tired of being so reachable in this online age we want to disconnect—but doing so means we'll be socially alone, because we're the only person we know in our town who is queer/trans/furry/kinky/poly/etc.

Screw the numbers, fuck the algorithm, I want to actually connect.

And connect I have. In fact, here's some connections I made on cohost that made a difference in my—and other people's lives. (in no particular order)

• Thanks to @ldx, I learned about bitsy. I made a paper template for people to hand-draw their own sprites and and co-built a bitsy game with the 35+ participants of our GGJ Tokyo site.
• I also made a bitsy game for my best friend's birthday to tell them how much I love them.
• Also thanks to @ldx, @Internet-Janitor, the creator of Decker, and @liananana, the creator of Narrat, I learned about indie engines and did a showcase of bitsy, Narrat and Decker. I built a little tarot-reading Decker prototype that's still unpublished. You can see the showcase on YouTube.
• Thanks to @highimpactsex's review, I played and cried my eyes out playing 1000x RESIST. It sparked some very tearful and heartfelt conversations between @mabbees and I on the Hong Kong riots, our own families and personal generational trauma.
• Thanks to @melinoe, they connected me with some other queer indie game cooperatives and got their advice for starting Studio Terranova.
• Thanks to @renkotsuban, I was introduced to so many great games from Japanese devs—and got in trouble with our rabbits when I started clapping along to their Nice Gear Games livestream.
• Thanks to @whatnames and Game Dev Galaxy, I not only found out about an all transmasc dating sim, I learned about the Neo-Twiny Jam and made a little game about glassblowing.
• When I made the Interface Drama Master List I only knew what had been inside my own head. It was thanks to @morayati and @ianmichael I got some more long-term perspectives on interactive fiction and how it has played in this space for longer than I realized. Anytime someone sent me an ask about interface dramas, it inspires me to keep working on the list.
• Thanks to @wavebeem, @MeItsMe and everyone who sent me asks on my birthday. Over my birthday I was negotiating a very contentious client contract, and thinking about literally anything else helped me relax.
• Thanks to @geometric who let me play their Playdate at an event, @mabbees bought me one for my birthday. I fucking love this console. I take it everywhere. And I'm planning on building something in Pulp soon.

To everyone above, and many others, thank you. You inspired me, gave me different ways of looking at the world, and enriched my life. I hope I could do the same for you.

Not everyone has had the same life-enriching experiences. Thinking about this has got me thinking about what the next version of cohost might be...and how we can prevent it from becoming the echo chamber we escaped from.

In @alyaza's post Cohost So White: A Comprehensive Record of the Matters of Race on Cohost.org, they catalogue cohost users dismissing racial discourse like this:

“well it's not technically accurate so it's not really a problem (so stop talking about it)”

We're not done with conversations about race—in fact, I don't think we've even properly touched it as a community.

To bring it back to degrowth, degrowth is coupled with anti-colonialist and feminist movements. Many institutions have dismissed the idea of shifting from valuing individual wealth and comfort to community care and collective action as a personal attack or attack on progress. "We've industrialized and cured so many illnesses," the argument goes, "why would you criticize something that brought so much goodness to others?"

From “The Future is Degrowth,”

"Any criticism of the present is equated to the dismissal of the advances we have made. 'If you don't like it, go live somewhere else.' This argument is the last resort of those who aim to preserve the status quo."

I believe we can reflect on the great parts of cohost and not shy away from the fact this site that preserved a white and ableist status quo that caused many people of color to shy away or leave the community. Avoiding these conversations has no place in the online future I wish to be a part of.

I hope it is a bright one. One that makes space for community AND collective action. One that allows for discussion and conflict, and nuance and love.

Thanks again to everyone who I've had the pleasure of meeting on cohost, even if you're going offline to live off the grid with your witch boifriend and never come back online. For those of you who are online, link me your websites/blogs, and your itch.io pages.

Shine on you crazy diamonds.

Yours truly,
CJ

-------------------

this one is gonna miss this place so much

I know what naysayers are already thinking: "if it's shutting down, how does it prove that your definition of The Pure Internet can happen?"

first, the definition. The Pure Internet, to me, is an internet that functions the way I remember it as a young kid. It's primarily sharing stories and information, whether that be through shitposts and memes or long-form blog entries. Cohost is a fantastic example of The Pure Internet; it's not perfect because it's built by and for humanity, but it's unapologetically built for humans to exist in. It's not built for human consumption, which is your Twitters, your Facebooks, et cetera. You don't "consume content" on The Pure Internet," you are in community with The Pure Internet.

So how does Cohost shutting down prove that The Pure Internet can exist? Well, it fucking existed. That's how. It proves that these things can pop up every now and again. It proves that you can be lucky enough to get pulled into The Pure Internet just because you know somebody who knows somebody, or because you heard about it from someone you're following, or you heard from a friend. It proves that these types of projects aren't unreachable or unattainable.

Furthermore, Cohost's short existence is itself proof of genuine, vintage Internet. Many websites developed back in the day were short-lived and only seen by a few eyes. In retrospect we see all the long-term projects like social media platforms, YouTube, Twitch, et cetera, but we don't remember all the smaller pieces of the puzzle that went missing. we don't notice all the tiny sites that existed in an incredibly small way, here today and gone tomorrow.

These things can happen. People are desperate for a Pure Internet, and there are people willing to step into the Modern Web and make it happen with exhaustive effort. ASSC are just one group of many other passionate people who want Pure Internet to exist. Cohost is a proof-of-concept for a revolution won by paper cuts. If we, as people who've experienced the Internet at its best in 2024, can show others that it's possible to experience the vibes of The Pure Internet, in its true-to-form short-lived nature.

Go forth and proselytize the goodness of The Pure Internet. It can exist in 2024. It can exist in the future. The Human-centric Internet can blossom even in this late-stage capitalist hellscape ruled by the ultra-rich.

Is that on top of the links to various social media sites, so many posters are putting up links to personal sites. Often at the very top of the list.

BBSes, web rings, Newgrounds hosting everything,
Federated Twitters spreading Toots around the net,
Little forums, big Discords, IRC and imageboards,
Archive team historians make sure we don't forget,

Furry spaces vastly grown, archive of our fucking own,
Queer respites we carve out from the cishet hegemon,
Telegram has yet to fall, Photomatt can't ban us all,
Carrds, and sites we own outright,
and Pillowfort are still not gone!

This is not the ending!
Cuz the queer and random always find their fandom,
This is not our ending!
We'll be reunited, though the world may fight it,

Being gay, doing crime, Furry Credit Union time,
Passing laws that regulate the Skinner box designs,
Server hosting, torrenting, peer2peer your everything,
Revolution's happening if you can see the signs,

Making little AnCom spaces, punching fascists in their faces,
Starting more tech co-ops knowing EggBug here was going places,
We have not yet begun to fight, expression is a human right,
No transphobic AI mod—Judith Butlerian Jihad!

This is not the ending!
Cuz the queer and random always find their fandom,
This is not our ending!
We'll be reunited, though the world may fight it,

This is not the ending!
Cuz the queer and random always find their fandom,
This is not our ending!
We will go on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on!!!!

also the August 2024 financial update, but I’m trying not to bury the lede.

Hi everyone,

We have come to the decision to cease operations of cohost and anti software software club due to lack of funding and burnout. As of today, none of us are being paid for our labor¹; all of our money in the bank, and any money coming in from people who buy our merch or don’t cancel cohost plus, is going towards servers and operations — paying the bills so we can turn the lights off with as little disruption as possible.

cohost will become read-only on Tuesday, October 1st. At this time, we will make best-effort attempts to keep the servers online through the end of 2024.

Development focus has immediately shifted to data export. We have offered minimal data export for GDPR compliance for a while now, but this is a barebones system that doesn’t meet our quality standards. We will be improving this system over the next few weeks and will issue full data exports for all users when the site goes read-only. We will continue to offer downloads of your data export through the end of the read-only period.

When the read-only period concludes, we will delete all of your data from our servers without a backup. Even now we want to reiterate that we think “data brokerage” and other common practices of the software industry are inimical to who we are as people, and we would never consider selling your data to others or asserting any rights to stuff you posted under any circumstance.

Majority control of the cohost source code will be transferred to the person who funded the majority of our operations, as per the terms of the funding documents we signed with them; Colin and I will retain small stakes so we have some input on what happens to it, at their request.

1. on that note, we’re looking for new jobs. we’ll each be posting about that bit individually.

😭

Fuck Stripe for this. Bankers really just hate artists, don't they. I hope someday soon, artists will have their own payment processor that makes paying artists easy, maybe a Furry Credit Union as some have suggested.

I wasn't really on as much as I would like, and the smaller community and tag-only search meant that I couldn't always find whatever super specific content I wanted to find. But I wanted it to grow, and was glad of its existence.

I know it's not realistic to expect this decision to be reversed. Y'all need to put your own survival first, And between offering a download for everyone's data and cooperation with Archive Team, I doubt there will be much data lost. We could even pick up right where we left off if that ever became a possibility. But...gods, I just hope we get a worthy successor someday. Part of the internet that isn't subject to endless enshittification. Where we can just scream our stupidest thoughts into the void, only to be yes-anded by like minded individuals, without being subject to outrage-for-engagement and algorithmic bullshit. Where artists can make money without being subject to endless bullshit.

I hope this isn't the end of the Anti Software Software Club, either. Not just that you all land on your feet, but that you can keep working on things that align with your values. I want you all to keep bringing stuff to the world. I want you to keep being the change we all want to see.

I love you all, and I will miss this site!!