I enjoy cohost very much. A question I ask myself frequently is, is cohost better than some other social media I've used because it has been designed in a way that encourages different behaviour, or does it feel better because it's currently smaller?
I think there is value in publicly-accessible i.e. non-closed social platforms. I'm also unsure how much of the problems with existing social media experiences are caused by active malfeasant as well as passive design decisions influenced by market factors (e.g. design for maximal, addictive engagement to sell the platform to advertisers), versus caused by larger material and cultural dynamics that act on the phenomenon of social media "from the outside."
The former can be influenced with design decisions and different funding models. The latter requires changing the "slot" that social media occupies societally, via acting on material & cultural circumstances writ large (here as at basically all times, I'm drawing on the argument Michel Rolph Trouillot makes about anthropology in ch 1 of Global Transformations.)
I guess I'm optimistic that design & funding are operant on how a social media platform feels, as opposed to only larger conditions. but I'm not convinced. I'm rooting for the very considered and thoughtful decisions being made in the design, governance, & funding of cohost to matter, because that would indicate that these are sometimes tools that we have to influence the organisation of social life.