i am not some voluntary user of this website; i'm here because being social online is a prisoner's dilemma monopolized by some of the worst technolibertarian freaks alive, and their choice to make social media the worst shit it could have ever been. it could be different. it *was* different.

Cohost was effectively the best parts of Web 2.0 social media a Web 1.0 forum merged together. Engagement metrics like follower counts or "likes" weren't generally available so clout chasing wasn't as much of A Thing, and allowing longer posts meant you saw effortposts as well as shitposts.

It was a crazy experiment where we all learned that better things are possible. It's where we got the confirmation we all feel deep in our bones: the numbers game doesn't matter

it was always crazy was how much cohost drove real traffic. i saw SO many people get a vastly disproportionate amount of sales and conversion from cohost. all without algos and metrics.

the golden era of useful error messages has ended. we had a good run where it told you the error in plain language, had some unique id attached and a link to support. now i feel like cutesy error messages are just a way of discouraging contacting support.