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i pay for cohost plus because i do have a job that pays enough and i want to make sure this place stays open for others that can’t afford it. personally i live in the cheapest place i can find in a very expensive city (mostly bc the costs here are flat, i pay a fairly fixed amount vs “cheaper” cities that wind up being MORE expensive ala carte due to a lack of infrastructure)

i went from having zero money for a decade to suddenly having Some i’m using it to support many people. we don’t know where those personal salaries are going- they could be propping up families or other poor queer folk, or expensive disability

and it doesn’t really matter, i’d still happily pay even more than five dollars to keep this place open because since twitter hit a wall it’s been a source of mutual aid for many and visibility.

as someone who has had to work with Business money, 90k isn’t really what people think it is. also, that’s not necessarily take home pay: depending on the tax & legal structure that could be their benefits + wages, leaving them with a take home closer to 50-60k

costs are not globally flat either, SF wages are high in part because the houses cost 3 million and the food is like 25$ for a burger.

i’m not saying this to defend them or sidestep any critique, just that these things are opaque (by design in society) and being without access to money prevents us from seeing what comes with more. folks at riot make 200k at a senior level and that allows them to maybe buy a house in their respective areas in a dual income household

that is a lot of money, but i also know many folks saddled with absurd student debt or healthcare costs, america is a terrible place and makes you pay extra for the privilege of experiencing it.

anyway, many folks on this site earn a lot and many earn nothing. it’s not the latters moral obligation to pay beyond their means, and i feel like the messaging i’ve seen at least gestures how uncomfortable they are even engaging with money

it’s not that they’re getting paid too much
imo, it’s that we’re not making enough. if a queer cooperative serving queer folks can find a way to make it sustainable without harvesting our data to feed into AI or selling virus ridden ads, there might be a future for other similar groups

all of this said, it’s very frustrating and i’m sorry many folks are in this position. i think every day “why me” for what i make and im still in many ways underpaid vs many peers i have for the stress im under. it doesn’t help that, like i said, america (where staff lives) is absurdly expensive in non obvious ways. a hospital visit can easily run tens of thousands of dollars if you live in a state that’ll not have legalized medical discrimination in recent years

it’s terrible

While 94k US is nothing to sneeze at, and is significantly more than even I make with a bunch of experience in my field, I wouldn't count that as "rich", most of the stuff you describe is just...not struggling financially, and for the level of expertise needed to run a website, I'd say it's fair (if very attractive) pay. And if you've been following this site's financials, you know cutting salaries wouldn't really help the situation, this website makes no money, so cohost plus is kind of a necessity if you want a space like this to exist independent of actual rich people and corporations exercising influence and control.

Seriously, your bar for "rich" is exceedingly low, rich people are the kind of people who spend way more than 94k on a daily basis, and get it back thru exploitation in a matter of hours. I'd honestly recommend redirecting your anger towards the people who are responsible for creating the kind of exploitative job market where decent salaries like these look this outlandishly good. This is just fair pay, and should be normal for all of us.

Does that take into account basically being self-employed and the difference in cost of living? 100k USD in San Fran is equivalent to 50k in Birmingham, so that's hardly a screaming deal, especially if they're on their own for health insurance and are maxing out their deductible

Have you read lori's website page on Cohost's finances?

setting aside how much they pay themselves, i think it's hard to say that "pay what you want, including nothing, we will never guilt you for not paying" is a terribly unethical plan. if you can't afford it, don't pay!

personally, i can afford it and pay multiple times because i value the site and would like it to keep going. i also appreciate that they try to hold themselves to a higher ethical standard, but i don't think that means we have to demand that they live on subsistence wages. i certainly wouldn't hold the staff of any of the other services i subscribe to to that standard

You can’t be serious, is this a joke post? $90k a year is rich enough to you to haul out the guillotine for some queer devs running a website?

With that in mind, is it at all ethical for cohost plus to exist?

Cohost plus existing is fine, in the abstract -- and I sympathize with the concerns you're raising here; I just don't think that's the way to pinpoint the problem. What I would point out is stuff like this:

After Staff themselves said "trying to get that [cohost plus] number higher will see seriously diminishing returns and isn't really worth putting a ton of time and effort into," several users disregarded that and put effort into it anyway, making posts telling other users to buy Cohost Plus and save Cohost. Some of these posts used "if you can" qualifiers; some did not. This outpouring of posts saying you should subscribe to Cohost Plus was successful at affecting people, including people who said they wanted to donate in the same breath as admitting that they're already financially struggling as it is. And in the end, that push to increase subscriptions raised enough money to surprise Staff without actually closing the gap, exactly like Staff already said it wouldn't. They were right about that.

So even without anyone having to act with deliberate malicious intent, we can't rule out the possibility that impoverished users felt guilt tripped into financial sacrifices on the narrative of "save Cohost" -- where part of what "save Cohost" means is cover salaries of $94k/year -- and the narrative of "buy them some time" -- which this money did not do.

I'm legitimately confused, because the only line I can find in the last two financials posts asking people to sub is "please subscribe to cohost plus if you can afford it", which seems pretty clear to me in its intent to discourage folks who cannot afford a sub from paying.

Or are you saying that accepting subs at all is unavoidably harmful with the current userbase?

The short answer is that there's no ethical consumption under capitalism, and a subscription counts as consumption.

The slightly longer answer is that there's nothing especially heinous about trying to raise revenue this way, and most sites bypass it with weirder, more intrusive methods (when you watch youtube with ads but otherwise for free, it's because YOU are the product, and your attention and personal info is being bought and sold by major corporations). No one should feel pressured to spend for cohost plus. IF it feels like there's pressure, that's worth examining, but it can only feel like alms in the sense that it's a choice you can make when interacting with the site versus compulsory (i.e. ads and data). Ultimately, even if you slashed salaries, the site would need to make revenue, and the folks barely making ends meet wouldn't be in a better position. I think the other reason it feels wonky is because with sites like this there develops a sense of liking it and that it's a moral good to support it. It's not. It's not bad either, it just is. I feel like I see this a lot with art too. My wife is an artist, and I hope art continues to be something people can do to make money (and commission her specifically), but commissioning her isn't a moral good in service of advancing the medium. It's a business transaction, and someone struggling should not feel guilt at not commissioning her or anyone else.

94k is good money, but it's also a far cry from the kind of wealth that props up horrid systems. If we imagined a staircase of 100 stairs and placed the richest person on top and everyone making nothing on the bottom and everyone else in between, people making that much are still pretty close to the bottom.

94k in the expensive markets in the US, after taxes, is usually enough to live safely and comfortably. It doesn't fully shield against financial ruin (if we hadn't had insurance, Jade and I's house flooding would have cost us over $30k. Even at 90k, that kind of hit can happen and can still destroy people), but it's good money. No denying that. It's also risen specifically because they're tying raise to inflation rate, so it's ballooned specifically because of ballooning costs. That's better than a lot of folks reading this I'm sure, but also it's what we should be lifting people towards, rather than asking them to live less stably. I'd argue that's the exact kind of animosity that billionaires want. It's the kind that has conservatives on Fox news saying that poor people must be abusing welfare checks because most of them have fridges and a tv, and has other poor people angry at them.

There's also a case of opportunity cost. We can talk about what jobs should and shouldn't pay, but web devs that can make this site can prooooobably earn more going elsewhere. Everyone working on it has to make the decision of whether what they're doing here is worth it. Some of that will come from work/life balance and benefits and the mission and the like, but if you have a kid or student loans you're probably thinking a lot about college tuition. The site has to be worth it against the available alternatives if they want ANY employees.

I don't pay for cohost plus. Social media is too small a piece of my life. I could put that into friend things and get more out of it, or save it and every few months have an extra meal out with jade.

No one making less should feel any pressure to pay for it. No one should feel pressure at all regardless of anything. And if someone is struggling I hope they don't pay. But I don't think it's wrong to have a payment option, and I feel like the team has been pretty good about messaging it fairly. If anything the panic seems more borne out of non-staff users, presumably burned by a lot of websites, creating the feeling that "we have to save this website". I'd guess that does create some guilt and that sucks. The alternative is websites made by people making more and earning revenue by extracting an amount of data they'd prefer not to disclose and send it elsewhere.

It's okay to not pay! It's okay to not pay and feel no remorse if the site burns. It's a hell world out there. You don't have to justify not supporting any project, and you should feel good about telling anyone who thinks otherwise to shove it.

I've felt this way when I've seen US salaries written down before and compared them to ours (it's a little over double ours, pre-tax)

But my understanding is that the cost of living is just substantially higher there in general, and that makes direct comparisons like this difficult. I pay £10 a month for 20GB of mobile data - when I think that'd be like $50+ in the US with most carriers and with less ability to swap from a shitty one.

I'm sorry but that's way off base. You know a house costs a literal million dollars where most of staff lives, right? $95k is like $65-70k after taxes depending on what state you're in, which is roughly $5.4k to $5.8 a month, sounds like a lot right? Rich ass motherfuckers?

You know how much a mortgage on a million dollar house costs? Remember these aren't mansions, that's just a normal, shitty, small house.

$5.4k a month.

So yeah, they can buy a house in 30 years if they don't eat.

Hey, friend. I think you may be falling into the trap of "People making $15 an hour are being tricked into being mad at the people making $50 hour by the people making $1,000 an hour." These folks have been transparent since day 1 about their salary and the risks. Folks who are struggling shouldn't feel obligated to support them.

But I think it might also help to take a look at some numbers. Let's talk about some costs briefly in my neck of the woods:

In Massachusetts, federal, state, Social Security, Medicare, and Family Leave Insurance taxes are about 27.2% on a salary of $94,616. That brings down the take-home income to $68,838.

The average rent for an apartment in Boston is $3,313/month for a 702 square foot apartment. On average, power bills over here are about $292/month, and although average natural gas costs are a bit harder to pin down, it sounds like they're something like $75/month. (Mine are way higher, but we're talking averages, not just me.) Water costs about $30/month in this area per person. Renter's insurance averages $21/month and is mandatory in most apartments. Getting around Boston via the MBTA is maybe $144/month if you're only taking the local subway and not even taking the commuter rail. All of that totals up to $3,875/month, which is $46,500 per year, so now we're down to $22,338.

Food costs are a little higher in this part of the United States. I got an estimate of $448/month for food costs per person if you're making everything yourself, so just on your own, that's about $5,376 per year. So now we're down to $16,962.

The average federal student loan payment is $302/month for folks who got a bachelor's degree, which not everyone may have, but it's a reasonable assumption, as that's the most common type of higher education degree in the United States. That's another $3,624 per year.

Based on previous financial updates, it sounds like health care insurance premiums are paid for, but deductibles aren't, and there is coinsurance of 20%. If you're a sick person like I am, you're likely to be hitting your deducible of $1,650/year every year for such a plan, and then you can have anywhere between $1,000 to $3,000 in additional health costs from coinsurance and uncovered items (including dental) depending on how complex whatever needs to happen that year is. If we assume a good year, that's $2,650 in health costs. If we assume a bad year, that's $5,650 in health costs.

Toiletries, grooming, personal care, clothing, and other miscellaneous expenses may average out to something like $100–$200/month for the average person in this area, so maybe $1,200 to $2,400 per year.

Internet is about $60/month, and decent cell phone plans vary wildly but can be had for around $40/month here. That's another $1,200 per year.

So all in all, that's $8,288 left over in a good year, and $4,088 left over in a bad year. That's nothing to sneeze at. But this calculation allocates no money for entertainment, travel, moving, emergency expenses, helping out friends, existing credit card or loan debt, and that also assumes they are a perfectly average person who is not spending the occasional $15 to eat out somewhere. It also assumes they're not supporting any other people in their lives, not sending home money to family, not buying any gifts for people, not saving money to buy a house, and not saving for retirement.

That is a livable life, but it is not a rich life. Please aim your ire towards people who are making their money off of exploiting the people who have no other choice, and who are making millions or billions of dollars doing so — not at the queer folks who are trying to make a platform for us to quietly exist upon.

So what's your alternative? Do you want them to make less money? If so, why?

Rich people don't earn money, they amass wealth. They don't own houses, they own people whose labor they exploit to amass more wealth. Direct your ire at those who actually deserve it. Mark Fucking Zuckerberg could literally buy out Cohost every single day for the rest of his life and not run out of money.