Numbers discourse has become inescapable and I just had a conversation that made me think a little harder about Numbers, so I'm dumping these thoughts here.
Back when Elon took his big dump on Twitter and a bunch of people flocked to fedi, there was a certain type of discourse that occurred. It was kind of broken into two parts. One part is that when people were leaving Twitter, there were a lot of content creators (largely artists) who were angry people were leaving Twitter because they need Twitter to do their business and fedi wouldn't fill that gap. That's debatable (I've seen artists say they get more views/likes on Twitter and Instagram but more sales on fedi, but everyone is going to have different experiences) but the point is they said Leaving Twitter Is Hurting Artists. I'd argue it's not your job to sit on a Nazi site just to keep someone else's business afloat by being a room filler but that's besides the point.
The other argument is the one I really want to focus on. Some artists were upset that fedi, or technically Mastodon in this case but most fedi software would have the same results for them, was not built in a way that helped them reach as many people. Without the algorithmic discovery tools promoting them, or the ability to game the algorithm to get their art shoved into more people's timelines, they were worse off than on Twitter or Instagram. And I wouldn't know, they could be right. It very well may be a better platform for boosting their work to get them sales and kept them fed and keep their rent paid.
But there's a counterargument here: if I am a person on a small social media platform like a fedi instance (a specific instance, not all of fedi, because different instances will differ on their approach here) then...is it really up to me to keep your business afloat? Much like with the people getting angry at people who left Twitter, I have to ask why my social media experience has to be dictated by people who want to sell me things. Even if I appreciate their perilous situation, even if I like their art, does everything I do online have to be a compromise so that I can be advertised to? Sure, it helps them if their pants get shoved unwanted into my timeline, but do I have to now have my platform be one that shoves posts I didn't sign up for in my face for their sake?
So I absolutely understand the Cohost users who see a call for Numbers and get upset. You signed up for the no numbers website and people who actually need numbers to effectively do business and keep a roof over their head (instead of wanting numbers because numbers make their brain busy) want that to change.
But here's where I think fedi and Cohost diverge: while Cohost's design philosophy is No Numbers, I think Cohost's future is at odds with that. By that I mean I think Cohost's plans and intentions, whether they even realize it or not, is going to necessitate the numbers. And that's because of tipping and subscriptions. Cohost is placing their bets on tipping and subscriptions as their big future revenue source. We already know Cohost is not well off financially. Though we're still missing several financial reports (I know I know don't get me started etc.) the last numbers we saw still had them running at a loss. And Cohost Plus isn't the answer, their subscriber rates compared to active users are higher rates than most places, tons of companies would kill for their paid to free user ratio, and yet they were still nowhere near the income they needed to cover their costs. An influx of new users doesn't help much unless they all pay, because they just drive costs up otherwise.
So ostensibly all of their dev time right now is currently focused on launching tipping. Now, tipping itself isn't meant as a money maker, for whatever reason they've decided to not take a cut of tips. But they said they needed to launch tipping as a prereq for launching subscriptions which they will take a cut of. And they're putting all their time into this because they need income. So this is their big thing. They're going to be a site that lets users monetize their content in order to have that revenue stream. The devs were actually working on a Patreon competitor before abandoning it to do Cohost, so this makes sense as a path for them to want to take.
And this is the problem...you can't hope to be The Site Artists And Creators Use To Get Paid By Their Fans without also being a Numbers site. I don't know if the devs just didn't think about it in these terms, or if they're hoping to have their cake and eat it too here, but being the No Numbers Site and being The Place For Creators To Do Business is pretty incompatible. These are the people who actually need numbers, like...imagine going to someone whose main income is OnlyFans and trying to convince them that view counts or whatever don't matter and they should learn to just vibe. That's not how it works when this is your business, the numbers matter.
So from a community standpoint I fully understand the people upset at the idea of people coming in and wanting numbers. But I think the conflict over time is that Cohost itself, by design, is attempting to court people who need numbers, and tying the long term sustainability of their site to courting said people. I think it's impossible for Cohost to never have numbers. When it's the Number Needers who pay your bills, you are going to have to give them what they want or die. The tldr is: the fights over numbers will only get worse later, because numbers are going to become significantly important to the long term health of the site...a site that is very anti numbers.
