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jkap
@jkap
staff
@staff

cohost patch notes vol. 37: there are so many of you now edition

every time we say how many users are on the site it’s incorrect within an hour, so for now we’ll just say “a lot, more than we said in the financial update yesterday.”

relatively light this week, we’re putting a lot of work into support, moderation, and improving performance; none of which are extremely visible and all of which take a while to do.

first: we now have a better way to request new features! we’ve got a forum of sorts set up over on our support site where you can post feature ideas and vote for the ones you like. this will be incredibly helpful for us moving forward to be able to prioritize based on what y’all actually want! it will also allow us to shift resources from processing feature requests and towards processing support tickets that require action. we’ll link to it elsewhere soon, but you can always get there from help.antisoftware.club!

EDIT 1:23pm PDT: we were having some trouble with accounts on the support site that we think we've resolved. if you try creating a new support site account and it says your email is already in use, you've probably sent a support request before! just hit "forgot your password" on the login screen and you'll be able to set a password, log in, and submit ideas to your heart's content.

what’s new

  • design and functionality changes for content warned and 18+ posts
    • we're changing the term we use for 18+ content from 'adult content' to '18+ content'. this makes it clear what age restrictions pertain to it, and makes it easier to abbreviate.
    • you can now re-hide any content warned or 18+ post that you’ve clicked through!
    • logged out users can now view 18+ posts after passing an age gate
    • note: you may have noticed some small visual bugs related to this work; they have been fixed as of this morning
  • updated copy around how invites and activation work
    • we had made this change about a month ago but, due to some issues with our text localization system, they didn’t actually take effect! this caused much confusion for everyone and has been resolved.
  • assorted spam prevention measures on the backend
    • for the first time ever, we are having to deal with spam! this is an important milestone in any young website’s life, and it also completely sucks.
    • for obvious reasons, we are not stating what changed or what measures we are taking.
    • this is one of the many fun new things we had to account for with the recent user growth. you’ll learn about more of them soon!

coming up on cohost

  • a “hide comment” button in the comment threads for your posts
    • folks were requesting better tools to handle comments that they didn’t want to see associated with their posts, and this was a feature we wanted to ship for a while, so we moved it up the stack.
  • automated account deletions are still in progress
    • this work shifted from jae to colin due to the performance fixes (keeping the site online) taking priority for them. hopefully should be wrapped up soon.
  • the aforementioned performance fixes
    • we are incrementally migrating the frontend over to a new general architecture that should help some of our bottlenecks. we’ll say more about this once it’s done.
  • bookmarked tag feed
    • jae still really wants to do this so it will happen after the initial perf fixes
  • more support documentation!
  • updated community guidelines
    • we haven’t forgotten about this! we’re hoping to have the finalized wording done soon. there’s still a lot to consider around the wording here and we are still committed to getting it right. it’ll be easier for everyone if we do.

until next time, thanks for using cohost! :eggbug: :host-love:

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in reply to @staff's post:

lori
@lori

I'm just going to share some frank feelings about the community guidelines: I'm in another community where the rule is just, verbatim,

"No sexual depictions of children."

That's all that's needed to me. Sure, you can say people will rules lawyer it, but they'll do it anyway. There's no rule you can write that will stop people from finding an edge case or an excuse to post csa art. You just have to do like every other rule and make the rule, and tell people who try to wiggle around the rules to cut it out. I think you are trying to reach for some perfect bulletproof guideline that will make everyone happy, and I don't think that's possible. And with there being so many new users right now, I don't think it's fair to leave them in the lurch on whether this site will allow this content or not, because I've already seen a LOT of people join, find out that these discussions have been going on, and want to leave because of it. This needed to be solidified way before now.

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atomicthumbs
@atomicthumbs

the Big Discussion Thread had a real good comment down near the bottom detailing exactly what needs to be extensively considered while coming up with how to phrase a rule about this. i kinda get the impression that they want to do the job in such a way that they will never have to litigate this shit again

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lori
@lori

That's my point. They will still have to. There's no airtight policy you can write that won't have people arguing about it forever. There will always be people that want to post csa art and there will always be people who don't want to be on a site that has it in any form and any attempt you make to come up with a list of what's okay will have "what about 100 year old dragons" "what about aged up characters" "what about if it's cub art" "what about if it's pixies that mostly still looks human but aren't"

You can't solve for all the excuses. No matter what rules you make about anything on a website, even if you make your rules a 50 page PDF, you will have people who think they've found the excuse for it to be okay. So I think spending a month trying to word it just right is a waste of resources when you can just say yes or no and still have the same arguments anyway.

Edit: let me give an example from a less Hot Topic that might help

Cohost doesn't allow people to advertise MLMs, ponzi schemes, etc. They give a decent list of things that aren't allowed here. You know what an MLM seller will say? "Well I'm not in an MLM, this is direct sales and I'm a business owner. Your rules don't say direct sales are banned."

You can either spend forever trying to find the exact rules that will cover every term they could use or you could realize their upline will give them a new tactic to tell people every month to get into places that ban MLMs and just say "doesn't matter this isn't allowed".

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throwaway
@throwaway

I assume my post is the one @atomicthumbs is referencing, so without weighing in on the specifics of what the rule should be, I do want to make another point in favor of robustness. While you're right that bad actors will always try to find ways to skirt or outright break the rules, there are many more good actors, who would benefit from actually knowing the what the rules are, so they can follow them, or decide the site isn't for them.

If someone just wants a place to post erotic illustrations, some of which depict characters that could be construed as children, but which are not intended to be, the rule "no sexual depictions of children" will not tell them whether they are welcome, nor whether they are allowed to post that kind of content. Clear, precise rules will allow them to self-select out of the userbase, or else stick to only posting content that is explicitly allowed. Otherwise, they may inadvertently post content they genuinely believe does not break the rules, potentially upsetting other users, requiring unnecessary moderator intervention, and frustrating the user themselves.

On the other side, users who don't want to use a site that allows certain kinds of content would also benefit from actually knowing what the rules are. If a user does not want to use a site where certain kinds of erotic art are allowed, a simple rule like you proposed does not tell them whether Cohost is safe for them! If the content they dislike is allowed, users may feel tricked when they realize it. Even if it is not allowed, potential users who don't want to see it may decide that since the rules do not explicitly ban it, it is not safe for them to join, even though more precise rules would have put their concerns to rest.

Ultimately, clear guidelines are essential for creating a welcoming home for adult creators, sex workers, and their communities, and for users who share a site with those communities. As you note, staff will need to make rulings on these things anyway, so I truly see no downside to writing a rule that is as clear and precise as possible ahead of time, so that all users know what they can expect. Otherwise, the piecemeal rulings will inevitably be contradictory, frustrating, and confusing for the users who post erotic content and those who report it or just don't want to see it. Robust, precise rules will let all users know whether this is a safe site for them, and will reduce the moderation burden in the future by telling creators up-front what they are not allowed to post. Rules do not solely exist to give moderators an excuse to ban bad actors, but also to make sure everyone is on the same page about what will and will not be allowed.

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lori
@lori

I don't think you're wrong about getting everyone on the same page, but I think the issue is when you take what has now been like a month to clarify what the rules are, and apparently it will still take longer, we're all sitting here having no clue what the rules will be. We don't even have a hint of "we're trying to ban all of it", "we're going to allow certain things", we're all sitting here in the dark for a month or more with nobody knowing what the intent is. So I think you're right in that sense, but I still think this has been the wrong way about it. If we at least knew what they were trying to do, people would know whether this site has the same community vision as them in general.

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clusterfluff
@clusterfluff

cw: this comment touches on adult subjects as a heads up :U

can you at least answer for now what general direction the content guidelines are heading? so many artists and survivors including myself have felt wildly uncomfortable here after the vitriolic response and wild slinging of way-too-heavy terms at anyone who's against censorship for any reason, both because it was almost completely unmoderated until way too late, and because we've seen this happen time and time again: a site's users keep demanding more and more be added to the forbidden content list, the site gets overrun with antis and fiction police, sex workers and nsfw artists get bullied off the platform, and optionally, the site dies a pathetic death.

like...i don't want to imply that this is where the site's heading but it keeps...happening. furrylife, sheezy, buzzly...i get that this isn't primarily an art site like those, but many of us were attracted to it for its potential as an adult-friendly art platform regardless. and we were having fun, until a bunch of inactive users crawled out of the woodworks to call anyone and everyone a pedophile lmao
it doesn't feel safe to be here if you draw anything other than 'socially acceptable' nsfw art, and what that even IS varies from person to person. feral? some people think that makes you a zoophile. pokemon? same. age gap adult relationships? pedophilia. noncon? you're literally a real actual rapist. incest? you must want to fuck your own mother. etc.

basically...tl;dr can you at least tell us finally if you're going to be allowing more of that harassment and shit slinging?

also, i would love a way to make my posts and page hidden specifically to logged out users without having to go full on private :(

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jkap
@jkap

(answering in reverse order, sorry about that)

allowing for hidden-while-logged-out pages is a good feature suggestion and one that's on our radar. we'll add it at some point, but no guarantee on when.

as to your main point, i completely understand where you're coming from. we're well aware of how we failed in moderating the original discussion about this, and we've been more careful about keeping things from getting out of hand since then.

to be completely frank: our goal is to be maximally permissive of NSFW content, unless our hand is forced by a third party.

this is important to us ideologically, not from a business standpoint, and so we will do what we can to make sure our hand is never forced here. this is not a guarantee that NSFW content will always be allowed (unfortunately it's impossible to guarantee that, as much as we want to), but it's a promise that we won't bend at the first sign of pressure.

our goals with the incoming rules are:

  1. standardize our rules to make moderation less labor-intensive and more consistent. as a bonus, being as clear as possible about what we allow and disallow means that people can choose consciously ahead of time if they want to be on cohost, and gives us confidence that they weren’t unaware of the site policy.
  2. respect users’ wishes around sexual depictions of fictional minors. while a lot of the discussion in our original posts was hostile and in bad faith, we saw that the good faith consensus was that cohost should not allow this sort of content. we opened it to community discussion because we do not want to make these sorts of major decisions unilaterally, and we intend to respect that process.
    • side note: we know that “sexual depictions of fictional minors” sounds like a weirdly specific term, but each adjective is essential to avoid any ambiguity. “depictions of fictional minors” are, obviously, fine; “sexual depictions of fictional adults” are fine; “sexual depictions of real minors” are illegal, have been and always will always be banned from cohost, and are one of the only areas where we will talk to the cops.
  3. make it easier for users to see content they want to see, while being able to avoid content they don’t want to see, without having to take ongoing conscious effort. this may feel counter-intuitive, but by having rules around how potentially sensitive content should be posted, we can make it easier for users who don’t want to see it to filter it out.

it’s easy for any rule changes to lead to a slippery slope; this is something we’re trying to avoid. we’re holding firm on these goals. we are not debating if we should change the rules around sensitive content that isn’t sexual depictions of fictional minors (e.g., drawn or written works about nonconsensual sex between adults); those will be allowed with correct content warnings. this is also ideological for us and will not be changing.

harassment is an issue and we're doing all we can to stop it. cohost can't be for everyone, but we don't want it to be actively hostile to anyone*. we have limited control over what happens on other platforms, but we’ve learned from our mistakes and have been taking a pretty heavy hand to users engaging in targeted harassment on cohost.

i guess the point of this is: we don't want what has happened on other sites to happen here. we're doing our best to keep that from happening.

*anyone with a net-worth under $1b at least

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throwaway
@throwaway

That said, one more piece of feedback: if you ever seek community input on a contentious topic like this in the future, providing a way to make anonymous and/or private comments (e.g. a survey) would be essential to getting an accurate gauge of the level of community support for either side. I suspect many people who might have weighed in on the matter were deterred by the only obvious way to comment being one that could get them publicly labeled a pedophile apologist or worse, but may not have cared enough to (mis)file a bug report, track down your emails, or make a secondary page.

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Bigg
@Bigg

Because it doesn't contain the word "sexualized". This is saying that it's "obviously fine" for someone to post a picture of Steven Universe sitting on a bench with all of his clothes on eating a sandwich

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caro
@caro

problems of my profile pic: it looks a bit like i'm replying to bigg and not spanospy. if cohost themes ever become a thing im learning them just to add the Old School Style Tumblr Lines to comments to help my brain nest them right

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bahlest
@bahlest

i trust the finalized guidelines will at least not lead to a famous incident during the tumblr 2017 purge where it flagged a picture of my biceps as adult/nsfw automatically. it will be up to me to do that to myself.

jokes aside, it's nice to always see updates like this even if it's all small stuff on a to do list. thank you for transparency.

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juv3nal
@juv3nal

and I see now (after trying to repost it) that it is in some kind of moderation queue? The support site should have an indicator of things you have posted that are in the queue to avoid people attempting to repost things imo.

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tit
@tit

by pure coincidence l strolled onto the support page 5 minutes after all the posts were made & supposedly was one of the first people to fall into the "account not working" trap! good that's fixed, it confused me for quite a bit trying to figure out where to post suggestions :')

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chamomile
@chamomile

Could you elaborate on the "hide comment" feature? Will this be like Twitter, where the comment will be hidden unless people explicitly click to see it, or is it going to be essentially deleting comments? (Or something else, and I'm misunderstanding?)

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bem
@bem

while you are discussing the community guidelines, a suggestion: "do not share intimate photos or videos of a person that were taken without their consent" seems unnecessarily specific. it's clear what specific behavior you are trying to address with this, but one hopes that it is against the guidelines to share intimate media of a person without their consent regardless of whether it was originally taken with their consent. if this was discussed previously, apologies for bringing it up again and this one would appreciate a link to that discussion.

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eviee
@eviee

also this still needs to be fixed! not sure if i remembered to send an email reporting it tho

https://dl.vixen.zone/yaq9sp/Screenshot from 2022-11-03 16-45-01.png

reporting an account/post while logged out just has this generic "error occurred" dialog when you need to be actually logged in to submit a report, i suggest adding a message informing the user that they need to be logged in to do that

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gladiolussystem
@gladiolussystem

The age gate thing really sucks in my opinion. I signed up for this site to hopefully have more protections on my 18+ stuff and making people sign up for an account, but now you can have most likely minors click on a small button that just says 'I'm 18' without any check to see whatever they want. Your ToS, Community Guidelines and now this age gate question thing, it keeps changing the site in ways that strip away people's reasons for signing up. I really hope if you're based in the US you take the US's law to heart for your community guidelines, especially for trauma survivors like me who use certain dark fiction and artworks to cope and be able to talk about the trauma to their therapist.

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vogon
@vogon

thank you for the feedback! our intent with the age gate change was to allow NSFW artists to share cohost posts with people who don't have accounts, and we didn't consider that some folks might want the added privacy. we'll be giving people the ability to set whether their posts, and which ones, should be visible to people off site as quickly as we can.

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vogon
@vogon

yeah, the way I currently envision the setting working is that you’ll be able to choose blog-wide which posts from it should be visible to logged out users, and have the settings “all posts”, “only all-ages posts”, and “no posts”

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