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Cohost Thoughts
I wanted to share some thoughts and words about the end of Cohost. It was nice to see a site pop up that was free from the "algorithm". It made me realize how bad other sites got with recommended posts/ads being constantly injected into your feed, as well as not even seeing the people you chose to follow. I always wondered if Cohost was alot of younger peoples first exposure to a site like this as most of the major players of social media would have been tainted by this by the time anyone under 20 now would have gotten to them.
It also shows that social media isnt possible to scale to a mass audience without collapsing on itself, or destroying the services basic purpose in order to make money to keep it alive. This is why with "old internet" forums and IRC chats were popular, as you didn't need a tonne of resources to host them for your own community. The services justt being for a specific community also kept the engagement and audience size down so the cost to host the service never ballooned past what was feasible to run.
As someone from the "old internet" I remember similar things happening with webcomics that would take off, where they would suddenly blow up on Something Awful, Slashdot, or Digg (remember those?). This resulted in a huge increase of traffic and the hosting costs for the comic which would balloon to the point the creator couldn't afford to run the site without increasing revenue in some manner (be it donations, or ads/sponsors).
Part of the centralization of the internet into the major players of social media today (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tiktok, etc) has also led to the smaller spaces being either unable to survive or being unable to be found by an audience. It seems rare these days for people to just browse for websites, or venture away from their main feeds. I am glad to see people from Cohost were discussing bringing back RSS feeds, as that seems like it would be an ideal way to still be able to view the things you want, but in a feed curated by yourself, without forced content from things you do not care about, or engagement bait. It would also give the option to opt into RSS feeds that are a curated amalgam of interests, in order to also see things outside your wheelhouse, or to satiate the need of a constant feed of work, but on your own terms.
This is just a side effect of the death of the old internet, not just from a technical view of how it's created and managed, but also a viewers method of interacting with it. Back in the day you used to actively have to search out websites for things you may be interested in, finding niche hobby groups and new interests along the way, even if by happenstance. It required more effort on the viewer, but often led to more communities and connections within them. Gone are the days of bookmarking your favourite sites, and then checking them in the morning to see if theres any new updates, to the point being forced to go to a site directly to see an individuals work would seem archaic now.
As I post this on Neocities, I do love seeing the homepage full of sites the users have created. A generation trying to bring back the pioneer like days of the old internet, where you would stake out a plot of land and carve out a niche place to show off your likes and hobbies. Maybe a return to something like this is the future for "alternative" social media, and the only way something with the same vibe of Cohost can survive. It's more effort, but in my opinion is worth it in the end.