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I'm a Vietnamese cis woman born and currently living in the U.S. You may know me from Sandwich, from Twitter or Mastodon (same username), or on Twitch as Sharkaeopteryx. I do not have a Discord or Bluesky account.

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ImplausiblyJosh
@ImplausiblyJosh

the thing that gets me about criticism of cohost is that people (seemingly not staff!) take it so personally and decide that these criticisms are the end of the world. it's either "cohost is good and great and could use some nebulous improvements, but it's still good and great and the nebulous improvements aren't even really necessary really haha" or "these good faith criticisms are an ATTACK on the staff and you should feel bad, you want them to DIE is that what you want". it feels like there is no in between.

someone says "this site, with it's current implementation of dark mode, is inaccessible to me", and then people come back with "what, you want this site to be twitter? you want just four people to DIE for your accessibility features?? have YOU ever made accessibility features, dipshit"

these criticisms of cohost are not criticisms of you, so you should take them less personally for one. for two, it's okay for someone to say that this site isn't accessible for them, as that also isn't a personal attack on you, how you use the site, your knowledge of development, or any of that.

this site is inaccessible to certain people! it's just a fact, people have been talking about it, they've have explained how it's inaccessible, this is a fact of the website as it exists right now. staff is also not providing updates about this inaccessibility, which is also a fact. people are allowed to get frustrated and critical about these facts! they are also allowed to look at the optics of things going on, like adding beat time or the eggbug plush, and feel frustrated that a highly-requested accessibility feature is seemingly taking a backseat to these things. no one criticizing cohost needs to be a developer or have first-hand experience making accessibility features to say "the site isn't accessible to me, and it doesn't seem like a priority to make it accessible to people like me".

you don't have to do free pr for cohost. you do not have to defend staff's honor. it's okay that people are pointing out the flaws in this site, and it doesn't mean this is a personal attack on you because you like this site.

edit to add “it feels like” in my opening paragraph


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in reply to @ImplausiblyJosh's post:

there are not two sides where every member of each side has the same opinions and actions as the other members of the side

there are not two sides where one is the calm rational side and the other is the angry reactionary side

some people think that no dark mode is somewhat dissapointing, some people think we should be annoyed at devs for not doing it already or not responding to it, some people have stopped giving the website money because of it. some people are annoyed that people want to defund the website when overall they like having a mostly good website especially compared to other websites.

some people just straight up lie about what others say, some people are annoyed that the group they don't like talks and the group they do like doesn't talk enough.

plenty of this stuff overlaps between a bunch of people and i doubt most people even follow enough other people to have anyone they fully agree with

I don't agree and I think it's very much a matter of perspective. From where I'm sitting it seems a lot more like people are acting like the ASSC folks are being deliberately malicious - some of the accusations are truly vicious! - and are acting like people pretty much universally saying something to the effect of, "yes, it's an important feature but try to consider the realities of the situation, in particular that it's a small team with a lot of competing priorities, and vicious and personal attacks are not gonna do anything except start fights" as "fans taking things personally". "Non-staff fans" is already tipping your hand!

Do I think my perspective is also limited? Sure. But in fact you are doing the thing I said in trying to psychoanalyze and attribute apparent malice to everyone who doesn't 100% agree with you.

I am making a very pointed observation, I won’t claim otherwise. But I’m going to make that pointed observation when this is now the second time I’ve seen something like this happen. First it was people acting like adding links at the bottom of every post pointing to an official accessibility feature request was harassment towards staff. Now it’s people saying making big posts asking for these requests are asking for staff to put their lives on the line, or “if you don’t like it leave” type shit.

It's frustrating to me, it’s frustrating to my friends, it’s a pattern I’ve noticed now in two separate instances, and it’s also something I’ve noticed with the larger site culture n cohost, so I’m gonna talk about it.

yes, there are less than 10 cohost staff, and there are definetly more than 10 people that are weirdly attached to cohost. thing is that's kinda obvious and literally any community around anything ever is like this.

your post only makes sense with the context of some events, and all the context you've given is "[calm reasonable accessibility], [evil cohost cult], there is no in between."

what actual point does this post make other than "there is no in between, cohost fans are the bad side"?

sorry that my posts are somewhat callous, i'm pretty shit at complimenting anything or being nice with constructive criticism. looking at your other replies i get that you have a lot of bad stuff going on, and it sucks that you're dealing with that and other people are treating you badly.

so far on my timeline i've mainly been seeing mean stuff going the other way. probably to a lesser extent than what you're getting

It’s all good! I’m trying not to come off too mean, here and in my posts, but I do want my criticisms in my initial posts, and the other one I linked, to be pointed cause I am trying to make a point, ya know?

I really do apologize if I’ve been coming off as mean to you, I am genuinely trying to state my feelings on something I’ve seen play out a few times here. I’m not trying to start shit or be antagonistic, even if I am trying to be pointed in my criticisms. I definitely don’t want that to bleed into people just asking my to clarify what it is I’m trying to say.

Edit: I’m also willing to admit I haven’t seen the fullest extent on the discourse! I’m trying to keep it to what I’ve seen, and the patterns I’ve noticed. There have been some posts that I’ve seen that are basically “both sides have good points” that I agree with and have liked, so I know it’s not all bad on one side or the other. I’m really trying to keep it within the scope of “don’t treat criticism of cohost as a personal attack”.