(i say minor because, as far as i could tell from a github search, only two people have even documented the existence of this field)
i'm providing this as a heads up for maintainers of the private API libraries that currently exist. if that's not you, or you don't care about the nitty-gritty of our (still officially private) API, you can skip this one.
we have removed the projectToReader field from followingState API responses. its inclusion in the response was a decision from Ancient Times and hasn't been relevant to cohost since well before launch, but was never removed due to us forgetting it was there.
this allowed an API client to easily tell if a given page was following you, information which we deliberately do not surface as we believe it, like most metrics, is largely cognitohazardous1.
if you were dependent on this field, it's not there anymore. if you weren't, that's great! nothing changes for you.
also, to clarify a point: this sort of sudden breaking change is something we are only comfortable doing because the API is still private. once the API is public, we will not suddenly break things like this. for a change like this, our deprecation plan would be to immediately start providing false data ("not following" regardless of the truth) with a timeline for complete removal of the field from the API response. obviously, any public API change will be largely case-by-case, but we intend to act responsibly with potentially breaking changes.
that's all! thanks for using cohost!
-
to expand on this, i actually built a userscript to expose this data, mostly out of curiosity to see how hard it would be2 and turned it off again within 10 minutes because i could already feel it causing psychic damage. we often hear from users that they appreciate us not including these sorts of signifiers that can lead to unhealthy behaviors like agonizing over someone "breaking mutuals" or etc. we're trying to do things in a way that's healthy and obscuring this data is part of that.
-
i have no experience with writing userscripts, let alone ones that are modifying a react page
