...and various answers as best as I could come up with on my own with a minor amount of googling. If there's anything wrong, feel free to call it out in the comments and I'll do my best to update it.
Note that I'm also an early adopter of cohost. I like it here, and I'm absolutely biased in the way that I think about this website in relation to other social media websites. There are things that other people like about TikTok like discovering a new brand via targeted advertising and algorithmic prioritization that will simply never happen on this platform. I happen to not be interested in those things, so I don't ask myself questions about that specific scenario/feature. This is a list of what I ask myself, that's all!
Also shout outs to css-tricks for their guide to css grids which was invaluable once I realized that I needed this thing to have horizontal scrolling even on web.
You can scroll any part of the below table horizontally
Question
Cohost
Twitter
Mastodon
Hive
BeReal
TikTok
Instagram
Tumblr
Who created it?
Kassandra Pop
Alexis Barreyat and Kevin Perreau
Bytedance: Zhang Yiming, Liang Rubo and a team of others in 2012
Who currently (Nov 2022) has authority over your posts?
Elon Musk
there are different sysadmins for different instances
???
???
ByteDance and a minority ownership by China
Meta's Trust and Safety team under Mark Zuckerberg
Tumblr's (Automattic's) Trust and Safety team under Matt Mullenweg
How many people currently (Nov 2022) work at the company?
3 people full-time, 1 person part-time
about half of the 7500 employees have been laid off, and many more have signed up for the severance package, leaving some estimates between 2k-3k remaining
Mastodon is an open source protocol, so there is no company. You can look at the contributors on github
How do they plan to scale if it's successful?
Depending on how the run-rate and moderation burden looks, gate posting for new users and gradually roll out ~1000 at a time in the near future
Severe layoffs and riding the line of what's legal in terms of toxic workplace environments to artificially boost the "revenue / engineer" ratio to be more in line with Apple and Google, thencollect more data, run more ads, content creator programs, revise the algorithm™
More federated instances that talk to each other , with a promise for no direct support for ads
???
???
Collect more data, run more ads, content creator programs, revise the algorithm™
Collect more data, run more ads, content creator programs, revise the algorithm™
Collect more data, run more ads, content creator programs, revise the algorithm™
Question
Cohost
Twitter
Mastodon
Hive
BeReal
TikTok
Instagram
Tumblr
Do their values align at all with mine?
Yes
No
Depends on the instance
???
???
No
No
No
Who has invested in it?
cohost Plus! users and an angel investor friend
Most recently, Elon Musk to the tune of $44 Billion that was loaned to/invested in him, broken down here
Hive currently seems to be funded via weFunder, a private benefit corporation that allows individuals to invest early in companies in exchange for the promise of equity
According to Wikipedia: "In April 2022, BeReal received a $30 million funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz and Accel. In May 2022, BeReal secured $85 million in a funding round led by Yuri Milner's DST Global, increasing its valuation to about $600 million"
According to Wikipedia: "ByteDance is financially backed by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, SoftBank Group, Sequoia Capital, General Atlantic, and Hillhouse Capital Group. [...] In April 2021, a state-owned enterprise owned by the Cyberspace Administration of China and China Media Group, the China Internet Investment Fund, took a partial ownership stake in ByteDance's main Chinese entity and placed a government official, Wu Shugang, on its board of directors."
Instagram is owned by Meta, which is publicly traded on the Nasdaq stock exchange
Tumblr is owned by Automattic, which was most recently privately funded via venture capital from Wellington Partners, Schonfeld Strategic Advisors, ICONIQ Capital, BlackRock, Avant Global, Alta Park Capital, and Aglaé Ventures
Question
Cohost
Twitter
Mastodon
Hive
BeReal
TikTok
Instagram
Tumblr
Is there a moderation policy?
Depends on the instance
How do they plan to get rid of nazis?
Kick them off the platform
???
Depends on the instance
???
???
???
???
???
What is their NSFW content policy, if there is one?
iPhone app is beholden to Apple NSFW content rules
Depends on the instance
iPhone app is (or will be) beholden to Apple NSFW content rules
iPhone app is beholden to Apple NSFW content rules
iPhone app is beholden to Apple NSFW content rules
iPhone app is beholden to Apple NSFW content rules
"Male-presenting nipples" and artistic nudes are allowed, but iPhone app is beholden to Apple NSFW content rules
What are their plans for preventing harassment?
Harrassment is against terms of service, comments can be locked or hidden, blocks actually hide content, it's hard to make new accounts, discovery of content you don't like is difficult, there are no metrics shown for how many people like comments or posts
Lol, lmao
Depends on the instance
???
???
???
???
???
Question
Cohost
Twitter
Mastodon
Hive
BeReal
TikTok
Instagram
Tumblr
What's the monetization scheme?
cohost Plus!
Ads, Twitter Blue, Superfollows
Donations, hosting fees depend on the instance
???
???
Ads
Ads
Ads, Blaze, TumblrMart
Is my data being collected?
❌
✅
Depends on the instance, but generally no
???
???
✅
✅
✅
Is my data being used for ads targeting?
❌
✅
❌
???
???
✅
✅
✅
How transparent are the people running the place on things like policy changes, run rate, and other data?
Extremely, see weekly patch notes and monthly financial updates
Sort of by accident? In that court documents exposed several of Musk's plans so far
Depends on the instance, but overall the nature of open source and not-for-profit corporations makes these things pretty transparent
???
???
???
Quarterly shareholder meetings for Meta, maybe?
???
Question
Cohost
Twitter
Mastodon
Hive
BeReal
TikTok
Instagram
Tumblr
Can I post dumb little text posts?
✅ (if you're out of the queue)
✅
✅
✅
❌
❌
❌
✅
Can I post whenever I want?
✅ (if you're out of the queue)
✅
✅
✅
❌
✅
✅
✅
Can I comment whenever I want?
✅ (if you're out of the queue)
✅
✅
✅
✅
✅
✅
✅
Does this platform's success depend on addicting me to making a number go up?
❌
✅
✅
✅
✅
✅
✅
✅
Does it encourage controversial or inflammatory content?
❌
✅
Depends on the instance, but generally federation promotes content
???
❌
✅
✅
✅
Is there a default algorithm besides "reverse chronological order of posts by your followers"?
Nope 
✅ (reverse chronological for your follows is an option)
Nope
✅ (reverse chronological for your follows is an option)
✅
✅
✅ (reverse chronological for your follows is an option)
✅ (reverse chronological for your follows is an option)
Question
Cohost
Twitter
Mastodon
Hive
BeReal
TikTok
Instagram
Tumblr
How does it prevent context collapse, if at all?
Posts are shared with the first post at the top so you have to scroll past it to get to any comments or tags. There is no algorithm to show you anything besides what your follows and their rehosted content is. Posts have a huge max length, so there's plenty of space to elaborate without pieces being taken out of context
Lol, lmao
Depends on the instance
???
not applicable
generally videos are shared with links back to their creator, but that's it
???
Posts are shared with the first post at the top so you ahve to scroll past it to get to any comments or tags.
Are my friends already there?
Some of them, yeah, and the ones I'm meeting here have been lovely too 
Some of them, yeah
Very few
Very few
Some of them, yeah
Yes read-only
Yes
Some of them, yeah
What's the culture there like right now?
Nerds, especially gaming, css crimes, longposting, optimistic growth
Nostalgic, cannot look away from the trainwreck that Musk wrought, highest MAU ever
Depends heavily on the instance
Surprisingly large and optimistic growth over the last week if mentions of it in my social circles are any indication
Boomed last summer, but I haven't heard much since. Apparently people are generally not very exciting most of the time
Depends heavily on your personally targeted profile, but generally younger, entrepreneurial/small-brand curated marketing, advice, dances, and sound-based memes
Ads with some creators' content in between
Absolutely unhinged, big "I'm not stuck here with you, you're stuck here with me" energy, and lately they've been creating detailed backstories, reviews, posters, etc for the Martin Scorsese movie *Goncharov* that never existed and is based off a bootleg boot
