Outside of here it feels like the "big company must make money at any cost" rot has taken hold in the spaces that are sold to us as where we should connect with each other. Twitter being owned by the world's richest manchild has only made the bad atmosphere there worse as the site design has become more hostile and bot-ridden. I had a few months of thinking that Tumblr might be nice before the CEO went on his transphobic tirade/meltdown. Facebook is for the relatives who are well-meaning and ignorant to mingle with the relatives who twist their faiths into justification for believing in nothing except for their own comfort zones. Mastodon never clicked with me, maybe that's a thing of seeing forum drama tear apart small communities before but also there was never that important mass of people I'd be interested in following ending up on the same hub or whatever they're called. I never bothered to try Bluesky ("it will be the glory days of old twitter" doesn't work since the only part of old twitter I liked was offhandedly killed well before the shift in ownership), and will probably keep using the excuse "I never got around to using one of those invite codes" if anyone asks me to give it a chance. There's probably other options I've forgotten or aren't aware of but that lack of memorability/discoverability is part of the problem.
I haven't talked about my transness here because that's a personal matter I'm still trying to find my comfort with, but Tumblr's policy shift (I say policy in terms of moderation actions, not whatever empty intent they post to try to calm the crowd) was a depressing blow because it's not really a community I can be part of if the only viable option is to hide or deny a core part of myself. It was fun to drift in the sea of fandom brainrot over there but it's hard to keep swimming when the posts of trans triumphs I see there are increasingly attached to deactivated accounts with that default dead avatar. With Twitter there's been no question of if it's worth trying, my account is privated over there so I can keep track of the few people who won't post anywhere else but there's no hope of finding community there anymore.
Which leaves Cohost as the place where I feel like I can be myself and trust that the infrastructure or my own account won't come under siege by someone whose undeserved net worth has fed into their derangement. I like seeing how people post when they realize the structural baggage of other sites is diminished or gone, that what shows up on their feed isn't the result of a computer guessing what they want to see. It doesn't feel like I'm trying to game an uncaring system when I post or don't post, so much of that stress is gone. I want to see this site thrive so we can find out how far this approach goes, so I can have a space where I don't have concerns of being driven out by the direct or indirect bigotry of staff serving disconnected shareholders.
So please, whether here or in your own posts, remind each other why you've stayed as long as you have, and why you want the site to survive. Buy as many cohost plusses as you're comfortable doing, and when ASSC decides on a financial plan going forward do what you can to encourage and support.