cohost dot org

happy monday!

we're pleased to report that all data exports have been sent out. you should have received an e-mail linking to it, but we've received reports from some users that these have ended up in their spam inbox. in case you're not seeing it, you can also access your exports at https://cohost.org/rc/data-exports

a couple other notes about exports:

• we've received reports from users on Windows that the built-in zip extractor does not always handle the exports correctly. we recommend using 7-zip.
• exports have ONLY been generated for non-banned, activated users. if you were able to post on September 30th, you will have received an export.

we're still working on getting tools together to more easily browse your export, but in the meantime we want to highlight a great tool for the "find your friends" data. we've included a pretty basic html file in the export, but @eramdam has built a tool that loads in your data and makes it easier to browse: https://friends-of-eggbug.vercel.app/

if you're having issues with your export, please let us know.

thank you for having used cohost

hi everyone, we wanted to provide some details on read-only mode, data exports, and how to keep track of what’s going on with us.

read-only mode

cohost will enter read-only mode tomorrow, October 1, at some time in the morning UTC-4 (US Eastern Time). it will be october 1 everywhere in the world when this occurs, so don’t stress too much about the timing; if your clock reads September 30 then you can still post.

in read-only mode, cohost will look and function about the same as it does now. the dashboard, profiles, tag feeds, bookmarked tag feed, search, comments, and pretty much everything else will still function. you will not be able to make new posts, edit or delete existing posts, like posts, follow, unfollow, block, or silence users, edit your profile, or do any other action that would involve changing cohost. due to a bug, account deletions may not be available until after we have processed all data exports.

read-only mode is not a different website; it uses the read-only permission we’ve had in place since the beginning as a moderation tool. it’s still the same cohost, you just can’t post on it.

also the August 2024 financial update, but I’m trying not to bury the lede.

Hi everyone,

We have come to the decision to cease operations of cohost and anti software software club due to lack of funding and burnout. As of today, none of us are being paid for our labor¹; all of our money in the bank, and any money coming in from people who buy our merch or don’t cancel cohost plus, is going towards servers and operations — paying the bills so we can turn the lights off with as little disruption as possible.

cohost will become read-only on Tuesday, October 1st. At this time, we will make best-effort attempts to keep the servers online through the end of 2024.

Development focus has immediately shifted to data export. We have offered minimal data export for GDPR compliance for a while now, but this is a barebones system that doesn’t meet our quality standards. We will be improving this system over the next few weeks and will issue full data exports for all users when the site goes read-only. We will continue to offer downloads of your data export through the end of the read-only period.

When the read-only period concludes, we will delete all of your data from our servers without a backup. Even now we want to reiterate that we think “data brokerage” and other common practices of the software industry are inimical to who we are as people, and we would never consider selling your data to others or asserting any rights to stuff you posted under any circumstance.

Majority control of the cohost source code will be transferred to the person who funded the majority of our operations, as per the terms of the funding documents we signed with them; Colin and I will retain small stakes so we have some input on what happens to it, at their request.

1. on that note, we’re looking for new jobs. we’ll each be posting about that bit individually.

happy monday! it’s time for your July 2024 financial update.

before we start, we had two releases on Friday that we’d like you to be aware of:

• we’ve released updates to our community guidelines related to our “missing stair” policy, as well as changes to our rules around AI-generated content. please be aware of them.
• we’ve launched tag synonyms and are working hard on handling everyone’s requests. we’re having to develop some of our policy around what does and doesn’t get merged on the fly (there’s a lot of edge cases!) so it’s taking us some time to get through the queue, but we’re doing our best to keep up.

now then, on to the numbers: