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fallible-things
@fallible-things

I'm seeing a lot of efforts to build post-cohost infrastructure more or less as fast as possibile, but I'm a bit weary of some possible outcomes from the ways people are going about things. I'm going to just write these out as Worries, because I don't mean these as criticisms of specific people, nor am I trying to prevent people from working on new infrastructures, I'm just writing out my worries for whatever New Spaces are next.

  1. Culture Preservation
    I'm worried that an attitude that will persist post-cohost in post-cohost spaces will be... trying to remain Cohostian. Trying to imagine that we had A Culture that behaved a Certain Way and we need to Maintain That. I worry about this from not wanting to be in static spaces, spaces that can't change. I worry about this from not wanting to deal with people defending an imagined Perfect Website.

  2. Missing the social forest for the technical trees
    I'm worried that a lot of the focus on what comes next is on the technical. The technical aspects of setting up new things we can use to Stay In Touch. It's understandable from the position of most technologies we want to move to don't accommodate for what we've gotten used to here (no clout numbers, more expressive post systems), but I worry about energy being thrown at technologies, and not considerations for the social aspect of maintaining networks. I'm worried mostly because I have used mastodon since 2016, and I've been in and out of techie spaces a lot over the last 12-15 years, and I know how priorities can get.

  3. Isolationism
    I'm worried we'll end up in a position where the only appeal of these post-cohost spaces is that they're related to cohost, that people who were on cohost are now there. I'm worried because I don't really want to be in a platform or network of platforms that mostly exist to preserve what some people had on cohost, and not grow, shrink, and change as communities and spaces.

  4. Replication for replication's sake
    I'm worried about latching onto technical and cultural specifics of cohost and suggesting that these are what made cohost great and these must, without fail, be included in whatever is next. I'm worried because I've done this before. Picking parts and suggesting "this is why this was good" all the while building an entirely different set of constraints around ourselves than that which we previously were holding onto.

  5. Communal maintenance is free maintainable
    It takes a lot of effort to do things, technical and social. In the throes of fixation, flow state, mastery or whatever you want to call it it doesn't feel like it but these things aren't infinitely sustainable. I'm worried that people will take for granted that someone else will sort things, or that there will not be conflicts between people who in this moment in time are getting along. I worry about this because I, much like many other people on this website, have seen it happen a lot with Mastodon, web forums, and other spaces both online and physical. There's benefit to assigned caretakers of a space, to not designing through committee.

  6. A certain idea of We
    I'm worried that there is an idea of a ex-choster in-group that needs to be maintained, and that we'll keep running into problems of racism and general xenophobia in these attempts at Better Websites. I'm worried because I've seen this before (lots of typing has been spilled over Mastodon), a lot of us have seen this before, and I want the next time we see it to be less frustrating.

All these things are repetitions of each other, more or less. I worry about stagnation and lack of consideration for social "upkeep" (the technical and monetary is easy to think about). What cohost is is a set of affordances and constraints. It's also a set of lessons that lead forward to a new design space. Cohost was the website after Patreon and Tumblr and Twitter and Mastodon and etc. etc.

People are building whatever comes next. But there will be something that comes after that too. And something between those. And many things off to the side, because cohost doesn't exist in a vacuum and its networks don't either.


astral
@astral
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in reply to @fallible-things's post:

yeah. all of these concerns are shared by the people who are making the decisions for the website league. we've collectively been through enough exoduses that most of us have each experienced each of these things at least once. then noticed that they were a problem and actively set out to not repeat those problems. i'm certain i've heard everyone who has put forth a proposal for the website league has stated something along the lines of, "cohost was easily the best social media experience we've had. BUT it had a lot of problems. let's see if we can address some of those problems in this next iteration."

I don't doubt it, and I appreciate the thought and effort the website league and groups like it are putting in.

I hope this post didn't come off as too negative, I just wanted to collect my worries in a space and see if they resonated with others. And if it's useful, or if it's something to bounce off of.

these are all exceedingly valid points of concern. i hope everyone in the league keeps them in mind at all times but it's easy to lose the big picture in all of the noise. having them clearly articulated is helpful. i recommend moving this or a permutation of it to the league administration node once that's up and running.

These are all risks but they're also attitudes that need to exist at some level to get people over this difficult moment where things are coming apart and the culture and connections we appreciate need preservation. It's a delicate balance, but I think the cohost diaspora won't always be like this, it will change and grow like it has in the past.

I'm a bit further worried that "We" might end up patting ourselves on the back for Considering It, which is another thing I've seen a lot before. Again like, I want the next time this happens to be less frustrating for the people of colour it affects, cos there will be a next time, and for the ways people try and build against this kind of thing to not be self-congratulatory or incapable of facing those conflicts without imploding or getting really weird about it.

as an early member that wasn't very well known, some observations i had:

witnessed someone who claimed they were being harassed off-site, and looked into it myself after realizing there was no option to report that which i could find at the time (to my knowledge?)

there was also no dm system, or ask system. it didn't look like there was much to do about this from my perspective except community defense. so, i tried this! (edit yeah, this meant i had to actually ask for their discord or something after replying somewhere.) i went as far as to find an email address of a site dev and mailed them about it. the ensuing conversation was vague, came from everywhere and was difficult to follow, but seemed to indicate that a lot of people were talking about it in some faraway place. i'm guessing that this is better now.

i'm not sure that her situation improved. (for me in particular things got strange in a way that made me no longer feel safe posting, but that's another story for another day, if ever...?)

the lesson i'd nonetheless learn from this though, is that, if you intend to welcome newcomers, it should be as obvious as possible where and how to ask for help when things go wrong, especially in novel ways.