This gives me the same feeling that I had when my first Discord account was spuriously banned back in 2019 or so - I lost about 5 years of DMs, server messages, and I still have not been able to reconnect with some of the people I lost from that. I've never trusted Discord or any other platforms ever since, I never put my eggs (heh) in one basket. Why do you think I was always looking for excuses to engage with people in other ways? I offered to mail people discs to their homes for free because that's a way to connect that doesn't rely on a platform as a mediator (although I used the platform to spread that message, so...)
Cohost has been one of the most comfortable and welcoming platforms I've ever had the pleasure to be a part of. It's been very important to me, and a small joy in my real life that has been pretty rough as of late. It's hard to think it's going to just. Stop on October 1st. A thriving, wonderful, creative, fun community just halted abruptly and turned into an archive of what once was.
I have a Twitter, but I stopped trying to seriously engage with that platform ages ago, and I pretty much just used it to follow smut artists. I don't really feel personally comfortable speaking the way I did here on an account primarily focused on furry porn. And I'm not going to spin up another account on that abysmal platform. Mastodon looks like a cesspit in its own right, the attempt to turn social media into a decentralized standard only leads to further atomization, easier exploitation by bad actors (remember Gab?), and a horrifying amount of potential instability and inter-server complications. I don't wanna get into that mess. It also looks ugly, I hate the layout. What else is there? Bluesky, with all the worst parts of both Twitter and Mastodon combined? Threads, which is like if LinkedIn was just full of unemployed Nazis and AI spambots?
I'd like so desperately to see Cohost survive in some form, or return someday, in some new shape. I have to maintain hope that there's some way a place like this could work, could exist peacefully and sustainably... But maybe that's just not possible under capitalism. But it was a beautiful glimpse into a dream of the internet, while it lasted. I'm glad I could be part of that dream. My eggbug plush will never leave me.
I will try to find another place to connect, probably, but I don't think there's much else out there that will appeal to me. I'll see y'all around.