In no particular order. I do have to make some negative comparisons to other sites but that just seems to be the nature of the game at this point.
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The lack of Numbers!™ is genuinely nice. Going back as far as my DeviantArt days (I no longer have an account there) I felt better when I could turn off page views. It's nice to see when people appreciate something I made or did, and it's nice to see when a lot of people appreciate something I made or did, and it's nice to not be in the position where I subconsciously quantify how well Thing A did compared to Thing B.
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No algorithm. I know this is a given but goddamn, it's nice to see what I want from people I specifically want to see things from without having "maybe you'd like THIS" shoved in my face. If I want to find new things, I can search through tags. And it's worked great for discovering other people and being discovered. There's nothing to game. This is how it should be.
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Folks here are real chill. It feels more communal, and I think this works with my previous point particularly because there's no algorithm, you just get together with like-minded people. I've been trying to stop thinking about cohost and Mastodon (at least the instance I'm on) as "social media" so much as it is "community sharing". Still workshopping that one.
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It's been nice to link with people a bit more. Again, kinda follows the previous point, but I started to get anxious about getting comments on Twitter, Tumblr, and Pillowfort too when I was still using it. Twitter and Tumblr tended to have people being weird or creepy, and Pillowfort had a lot of people being content cops demanding that I tag things to their specifications to the point that I turned off comments on my posts entirely.
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To wrap up, cohost is great for connecting and conversations with people, who I - we - would have missed otherwise. There's no algorithms to decide we want to see something different, and it's an anxiety-free experience because what we put out here feels genuine instead of being a numbers game that needs to be gamified for maximum engagement. It feels like a healthy relationship with online spaces. It's what the Internet could still be.