cohost proved that if you build a website like this, people will enjoy using it a lot, and also that it cannot survive in a hostile economic environment, while treating its workers well, even with a massive advantage (secret funder). cohost 2 will happen once we achieve the socialist mode of production
if it had VC funding and dozens of employees like bluesky it would be fine, but it wouldn't be cohost
I am plenty curious what will be done with the source code, but I assume we're months away from knowing that, at the least
i am so sick and fucking tired of seeing people online today say things like "it would have worked if they were paid less"
because that's exactly the thing. what you want is cheap labor. that is not cohost, either. cohost is not cohost unless it is done ethically, and frankly, every single member of ASSC could have been making some 2x what they were earning at another company for the last 5 years.
they were being paid less.
Honestly one of the most sombering things I ever saw here were people that'd show up in financial posts and go full middle manager "hmm well, need to cut expenses, most of expenses are salary.... why not cut salary?" without a hint of self awareness.
Here's the thing, cohost staff are the company owners. Starting a small business for yourself is not the same as getting a job, even if it's within the same industry.
If you get a job at an company it's reasonable to expect you get paid proper, because a company has income and a duty of care. If you're starting a company, it's not, because you have to find the income yourself first.
A startup is a black hole that you pour money into until it has enough momentum to sustain itself and then become profitable. You can't live on it, instead it lives off of you, like a vampire. It's basically impossible to have a startup unless you're already rich or have a do-nothing day job to pay your bills for the next few years.
It doesn't make sense to bring ethics up here. They aren't hired workers. there's no surplus value being extracted. they're business owners. They thought they could skip directly to "draw a salary" and worry about the actual business model later, and that didn't work.
It's not unreasonable or unfair to say they shouldn't have done that.
