jkap
@jkap

as has been said before, there are some things on cohost that are missing because we haven't done them yet (opt-in mention notifications, notification filtering in general, pasting images into the post composer1, etc) and some things that are missing because we will never add them (public-facing like/share counts, public-facing following/follower lists, etc).2

if you need the former, we ask for and appreciate your patience; we are a small team and things can take time.

if you think you need the latter you are honestly probably wrong, but if you truly can't kick the habit of Numbers you will likely be happier on a different website.

i often tell people that cohost is not for everyone, that we are not trying to make cohost for everyone, and that cohost is better because it's not for everyone. we're trying to make the social media platform we want to use, that attempts to solve many of the social problems that we have experienced on other platforms, and if that works for you too then that's great and we're glad you're here! and if it doesn't, that's totally fine! there are other websites and we encourage you to try them.

i very firmly believe that alternative social media is not a zero-sum game and that one platform doing well is good for everybody. not every platform is going to be for everyone but a person realizing they can break from the twitter/instagram/tiktok hegemony to try something else, even if that thing doesn't work for them, is good for everybody; that person will often continue exploring options to find their home.

so if you don't like cohost, go explore! find something that works for you! you will almost certainly find something free of the incentives that corporate social media creates and we genuinely hope you find something you like, even if that something isn't cohost.

(i realize this is somewhat rambling; it's a collection of thoughts that have been kicking around in my head for a while but i haven't really written down. i spend a lot of time thinking about this sort of thing.)


  1. this one's harder than you might think for reasons related to how operating systems handle images on the clipboard. you can end up with some pretty big images getting pasted in when their original form was a much more reasonable size.

  2. we know this line can be unclear sometimes, but when asked we try to be straightforward about where a given feature lies.


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in reply to @jkap's post:

Okay hear me out on this: what if I can't see my following/follower count, but everyone ELSE can, and if you're caught telling someone how many followers they have you're both banned for life. I call it The Cuckold's Count

its a real shame to me that people miss the Numbers Going Up and cant see how much better of a feed and community it leaves. the weird... almost competitive vibe?? of other websites i havent seen at all, and i havent seen a single weirdo being inflammatory for clicks. its just nicer here, really

The only time random people have found me on twitter is to get mad at me for a joke tweet I made about a player for their team, that I didn't even tag. On here, people actually seem interested in engaging with stuff and it's fostered a really cool feeling of these communities around certain tags.

You follow a tag you like, you start seeing the same poster over and over, you start leaving replies, and you follow some of them to make the process of seeing the stuff you like easier. It's nice. I get to post all the dumb TTRPG stuff I want, and since I tag it, it can be easily muted.

And another benefit of using Cohost more and Twitter less, is that I'm actually Using Websites again, instead of just letting Twitter be my homepage, essentially. So I'll go to ESPN or some fan site, and instead of just getting the One Thing, I'll now be pulled to read some other stuff, stuff I wouldn't have seen just on Twitter alone.

I like cohost. I like what y'all have built. Learning basic markdown has been fun.

At this point in our life we don't do much computer stuff, but we got to learn a bunch of little things when we used to daily drive Arch on i3.

Learning how computers understand the clipboard is one of those pieces of computer lore that always blow our mind. Like, we used to think when you copied an image, the computer just remembered the image data. But no! It remembers all of these possible representations, and so it does for other data types, and then chooses the appropriate one when you paste it, and also there's a few gotchas on when the data actually gets copied and it's like.

Whoa. Copy pasting is complex!!!

Anyway, we like Cohost. We know many artists, sex workers and more complain that this does not seem to be the kind of space where they can financially support themselves. And with Twitter burning, we are concerned for them. But as far as a social media site for us goes, Cohost does everything right. Iunno. We never used twitter. We use this, and we feel like we actually have things to contribute to this space, where there would be no place for them on other websites.

i totally agree with this and i will say this: get rid of "quote reposting" altogether! the more i think about it, the less i like that feature--i think it's just there because twitter and tumblr have it? just get rid of it, it doesn't do anybody any good. if you want to play "quote this tweet and make a joke" type stuff, just do that in the comment section (in that vein: make the comments section "posts" more like real posts, so it functions more like a forum). anyway just some thoughts

I think reblog replies are too ingrained into the site to be removed right now, but I super get it as someone who gets easily annoyed by like... many reblog replies to my posts that aren't even Objectively Terrible? like I'm delighted when people join in on a shitchost but I get peeved when like, people reblog a personal post in a way that takes it out of the specific context I had in mind for it. and I don't know how to communicate this peevedness or like do anything about it in a way that's constructive, so I just end up reblog-locking posts unless I have thought about them and specifically decided I don't mind people joining in.

Some feature requests that I've liked:

  • A page toggle to automatically set posts you make to non-rebloggable like how the 18+ page flag automatically makes your posts 18+, with the option to make individual posts rebloggable after the fact (link)
  • A way to disable reblogs for a post before you post it (also discussed in the above feature request, but not its own yet as far as I can tell)
  • A way to allow reblogs of a post but not reblogs with comments (I think that's what this feature request is about)

yeah oxipng + mozjpeg in a wasm module is basically the plan, the issue is finding time to implement that + telling users "yeah sorry you have to download like a megabyte of compiled code to paste images, hope that's fine, you can trust us that we're not cryptomining or w/e"

the thing about pasting images is interesting and makes sense. also, i think overall, this site feels really nice to use. i appreciate that there are principles at play, and those principles line up with what is, like, emotionally better for people overall as research continues to reveal.

I totally comprehend that public-facing follower-following lists would introduce the spectre of The "Ugh, They Follow Them?" Reaction into the site's behavioral pattern, but I really do fuckin' miss being able to find a friend and then just checking their follows for all the friends I may not have caught in the travel from twitter.

I say this with no critical edge or malice aforethought, just a very mild disappointment, akin to not finding your favorite candy bar at the checkout lane. Because otherwise, my experience on cohost has been nothing but pleasant; restorative, even.

my (EXTREMELY SPECIFIC PERSONAL ISSUE) is that the lack of following lists makes it way frigging harder to find more people to follow because i cannot think of the same tags other people use and i /dont know people already/

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