10mo ago

cohost to shut down at end of 2024

cohost.org /staff/post/7611443-cohost-to-shut-down

Technology @lemmy.ml

Riley @lemmy.ml

10mo ago

cohost.org /staff/post/7611443-cohost-to-shut-down

32 comments

Very extensive background saga, if anyone is interested: https://hackers.town/@lori/110656825941689147
- Was reading that and had the most insane sense of deja vu, then noticed it was posted a year ago and went 'oh, okay, I have seen this before!'.
  Surprised they lasted a whole year longer.
- Man, what a mess. This site was doomed to fail
- Thanks for linking to that! Interesting. I refreshed their page and they have more to say now that it's happened.
this space intentionally left blank while we wait for people to frequently ask questions
I thought FAQs were always just made up.
- I add stuff to FAQs when I am fucking tired of answering the same old dumb questions
Damn. Hadn’t actually posted there much but I did lurk quite a bit.
Just feels like every attempt at alternative social media is dying as the internet shrinks to a few corporate websites that control everything.
- I think alternative social media needs to be decentralized. There's just no other way it can be sustainable. Cohost was centralized - of course it couldn't stand a chance. Never mind all the other issues, which are obviously equally important.
  For me, the fact that we are having this conversation on the social web is solid evidence pointing in the opposite direction of your concerns. I counted contributors from eight different websites and at least three different software platforms only in this comment section of twelve comments.
  Alternative social media platforms have never looked so healthy!
  
  I love everything that Fedi stands for, I wouldn’t still be here if I didn’t.
  But it’s hard to shake the feeling that I’m mostly posting out into the void. I’m not optimistic about Fedi’s future, I think at this rate Bluesky is going to win even though they’re clearly only paying lip service to federation. Maybe if they can demonstrate that their federation works I’d consider trying a third party server, but it’s clearly not ready yet, and leaves a sour taste in my mouth as yet another corporate thing pretending not to be.
  Ever since I swore off Reddit after the API fiasco, and ever since I left the one Discord server where I used to feel like I fit in, it’s felt harder and harder to find alternative places where I can talk about my most niche interests, because nowhere else is big enough for it to be likely I’ll find anyone else who also wants to talk about those same things.
  I don't think Fedi will ever be that for me. The one thing I can say for Cohost is that at the rate it was going, I was able to find a lot more posts relating to my hobbies and fandoms, and I kinda regret that I didn't post more and lurk less.
  It just sucks to feel like there’s nowhere else on today’s dying internet to go that will suit my needs.
  
  For me, the fact that we are having this conversation on the social web is a evidence pointing in the opposite direction of your concerns. I counted contributors from eight different websites and at least three different software platforms only in this comment section of twelve comments.
  Alternative social media platforms have never looked so healthy!
  Very true!
- Just feels like every attempt at alternative social media is dying as the internet shrinks to a few corporate websites that control everything.
  Yea ... it's sort of a lens for me as I view/critique the actions and decisions of people building alt-social ... this stuff is hard and fragile but also important ... so not fucking around with it kinda matters (to me at least).
  The hate toward BlueSky from mastodon/AP people, for example, is misguided I think. The, IMO, general lack of concern for inter-platform interop across the fediverse bothers me too, where I ask whether a platform is being a good "fediverse citizen". And some of the "cultural purity through vigilance" culture out of the mastodon/microblogging crowd is, IMO, short sighted.
  A common thread being a readiness for negative behaviour and effects rather than building and supporting.
  
  @maegul @missingno
  I don't hate Bluesky, but I am pretty suspicious. I was a pretty avid user of Facebook messenger when it was using XMPP, through pidgin and other clients. They rugpulled me and my friends, when it became more profitable to keep it in their walled garden. Bluesky seems like it could easily head the same direction.
Yea the writing had been on the wall for a while AFAIU. I don’t know what lessons are to be gleaned from its story, but I’d bet at a basic level it’s that building new social media spaces is not easy. An old school forum is likely fine. But a whole platform with all of the expectations and features people have today, hard if not impossible.
Wow never heard of this platform. RIP
Wait, I thought that running a social media server costs only a few cents per user? The Lemmy crowd told me so!
- server costs were not the biggest reason, it was down to salary costs
  
  I was being sarcastic. Last week there was a big thread here were most admins people were equating "support the Fediverse" with "pay for the costs of hardware".

32 comments