[There were not in fact my final thoughts on Cohost, but it does summarize my reactions to others’ reactions to my previous posts about supporting the site. Note also that @renkotsuban apparently deleted the post I referenced; I’ve respected that decision by not trying to link to an archived copy.]
You know, I’d really rather be posting about poetry than writing yet another post about the travails of Cohost. But here I am, since a share of one of my posts has been “doing severals” and has occasioned some responses.
I would recommend in particular a post (now deleted) by @renkotsuban, which I think is fair and well-reasoned. I commented in response to it, and will expand a bit on those comments here, especially for people who don’t follow them. (Since they’ve locked the post from being shared, you’re not going to see it otherwise.)
First, my own position: I have a vested interest in seeing Cohost continue since I enjoy posting here, more so than on any other social media site I’ve used. I make more than $94K/year, so it’s not a burden on me to pay for more than one Cohost plus subscription, and my comments promoting the idea were directed solely at other people in my position. No one, let me repeat, no one, should be paying for Cohost plus, let alone paying for more than one subscription, if it would be a financial hardship for them. It should be like a decision between treating yourself to a lunch out or saving the money for something else you’d like better.
I also second the recommendation to not prioritize spending on Cohost over contributing to other causes. Over the past year I’ve contributed an order of magnitude more just to GoFundme’s than I have spent on Cohost, and supported a bunch of other good causes as well. Again, I recommend others do likewise. You should think of Cohost as something extra you can consider supporting once you’ve taken care of the important stuff.
Now, let’s talk about @staff and their actions. If I were treating this as a purely economic transaction I wouldn’t be paying for Cohost at all; I’d free ride on others’ contributions, not bother to comment on how the site is run, and be indifferent to whether it succeeded or failed. But since I am paying for Cohost plus, and am spending more on Cohost than the typical user, I have no problem with giving unsolicited advice to ASSC, and holding them accountable for taking whatever actions are necessary to keep the site running.
Given that labor expenses are the major issue, the obvious course of action is to either cut staff or cut salaries, or both, to try to reduce costs to a level that is sustainable longer-term. That includes stopping development on features that have no reasonable chance of contributing revenue in the short term. I would certainly put tipping in this category, if Cohost isn’t planning to take a percentage for itself, and likely subscriptions as well, since I suspect any short-term revenues from Cohost’s cut won’t be enough to justify the labor cost of developing the feature.
If ASSC still thinks it’s important to develop those features then they should consider ways to get other people involved without incurring significant costs. This does not necessarily mean releasing the Cohost source code as open source, i.e., under an open source license. They could keep the code under a proprietary license and just allow others to read and contribute to it, either as volunteers or as contractors paid a very minimal amount (maybe just $1 a year, in case they need to form an enforceable contract). They could also have contributors do copyright assignment to ASSC, so that ASSC can comply with whatever legal agreements they’ve made with their funder regarding ownership and disposition of the code.
Of course, lots of developers—probably, most developers—would balk at contributing their labor under these terms. Fine, they can and should contribute to other projects instead. And ASSC might balk at “exploiting” developers in this way. Fine, that leads to my next comment:
The bottom line is that ASSC needs to take actions to put the site on a sustainable footing within the next month or so. That does not include just taking out more loans, whether from the original funder or anyone else. That’s just extending the runway while still having little or no hope of taking off. I’m talking about having costs be less than revenue, both now and going forward. If ASSC can’t or won’t do that (for example, because it would violate one or more of the principles important to them) then I’d agree with folks who recommend stopping support of Cohost and letting economic reality take its course.
In the meantime, people should absolutely be saving a copy of anything they want to keep, under the assumption that the end of Cohost may well be chaotic and sudden rather than drawn out and well-planned. That includes making a list of your favorite posters and their handles or URLs on other sites, so you can continue to follow them, as well as advertising your own other social media accounts to your own followers.
One final thought: if you want to write or create art, music, games, whatever, the one thing you absolutely should do, before doing anything else, is to procure your own personal domain name and make plans to spend the relatively small amount it will cost every year for the rest of your life, or at least as long as you continue to be on the Internet. With some services (like Bluesky) you can have your domain name be your handle. And in any case you’ll always have the fallback of posting stuff to your own personal site, maintaining it yourself if you have the time and expertise to do that.