hi everyone,

we wanted to share an update regarding our previous financial update. If you haven’t read that post yet, go check it out first.

in this post we want to respond to some common questions and suggestions, provide an update on what we’re planning to do next, and tell you how you can help.

the numbers

first off: an update on how numbers have changed since our update on Monday. we’ve seen a large increase in cohost plus subscriptions, exceeding our expectations significantly. these numbers are accurate as of yesterday, March 14th (stripe only updates every 24-48 hours):

this is all, objectively, really great! it has been motivating over the last few days to see how much cohost means to a lot of y’all. even with this boost in MRR, we’re still operating at a loss of, on average, $17k per month, so we’ve got some other plans to help make that up.

the good news is the cash infusion from this recent subscriber wave (a bit over $20k after payment processing) combined with some funding offers we’ve received means we’re comfortable saying we’ve got at least six more months to make up that shortfall in one way or another.

more details follow! keep reading!

I am SO excited for the "artist alley" idea. Please give this all a read, but especially this part. Artists! Let's talk about it and send our feedback to artistalley@cohost.org

check it out if you like this site and wanna know more about how it's doing!

(Link: https://aftermath.site/games-journalism-game-development-ign-kotaku)

I can't help but think how true this is for the internet as a whole. We've proven so conclusively over the last 10 years, it feels like, that armed with the proper tools and language, marginalized groups will instantly turn those tools and language on their own in a misguided attempt to maintain the moral high ground, or to cynically attempt to self-protect by socially ousting anyone less cynical than they are.

and of course this leads to exactly what you'd think it would - social spaces where to hope is to be a contemptible fool. Easier to write long, lecturing posts about why everyone else should have expected failure from the beginning. Idk. I can't not tie this all together in my head, from puritanical tumblr sex-policing to twitter brigades over "problematic" writing because evil characters aren't explicitly punished, to, yes, the almost eager way many other marginalized people and queer devs now seem to root for the failure of each other's communities now that we're all split apart. I can't not see it all stemming from the same sort of vibe. It's been with us for a long time.

I think, more than anything else, it's a good reminder to me that cynicism isn't an end-all be-all. That it may keep me apart from bad actors, but it'll also prevent me from ever seeing - or supporting - the good ones. I fall into this trap a lot! But I really feel that all-consuming negativity is something to be worked against, not a coherent life philosophy.

honestly excited to see Bluesky push the "what if EVERYTHING was solvable through tech?" thought experiment. I think it's a stupid experiment and anybody who ran a website in the past 15 years knew that already but Bluesky got millions of VC funding riding on that belief so I guess if they want to do that, so be it, it's their money to burn.

• Rude: like, come on lol
• Misinformation: because we all know misinformation is easy to detect at scale
• Intolerance: yeah I'm sure this will never get abused or manipulated to target marginalized groups ever
• "inauthentic account" being described as "bot or person pretending to be someone else" while ALSO having "impersonation" is extremely funny. What's the distinction? Who fucking knows, good luck.

So many of these are such blatant cases of "i know it when i see it" that thinking you can automate them is very funny. But again, their money, not mine.