Given recent events discussed here and here, a lot of us in the niche social media sphere have been seeing new and returning users cropping up from Tumblr these past few days. In this case, the bad decisions in the spotlight concern one specific user, and since that user has listed contacts including a Cohost account, her departure seems to have spurred a particular interest in Cohost. Cohost is already a lot like Tumblr in some respects, but a mass influx of users from one website to another tends to cause some friction even in the best of times. Here's how that's been playing out so far.
At the beginning of the migration wave, more established Cohost users posted and recirculated some friendly welcome posts and advice:
One user even made a special Cohost rendition of the classic color of the sky meme. That's pretty neat.
Before I get into the rest, it's worth establishing some relevant context: people on Cohost generally talk about the lack of visible metrics (in terms of like count, reblog count, follower count, etc.) in terms of "brain cleansers" and "detox" because "numbers bad" and "you gain nothing from numbers except suffering." This aspect of accepted values and norms on Cohost is an important point of reference for the rest of this post.
As new and returning users began flocking to Cohost from Tumblr, some of them began making posts like this:
Overall, new and returning users have expressed several different criticisms and complaints. Some are related to metrics (such as follower counts) and some are more about a general lack of information, like the hidden reblog-additions.
Right now, my impression has been that the lack of reblog-addition lists (on the post page) might be the most popular complaint. The way the site currently works is that the first level of reblog-additions can appear in your notifications, but they are not directly visible from the base post. So for example, there have actually been reblog-additions on this post here, but you wouldn't be able to tell that from the base version, so the post just looks like it's been ignored. This setup may conflict with the expectations of those accustomed to reblog-additions as the primary way of visibly responding to a post.
Meanwhile, more established users have been making posts like these:
So there are several different points of contention here. Some people are objecting to DNI lists. Some are defending site feature decisions like the lack of a recommendation algorithm and the hidden reblog-additions. Some people are talking about Tumblr like a foreign cultural influence, and some are attributing it as a source of callouts and hostility.
It isn't possible to determine whether the different proportion of attention to different topics is just a matter of what I happen to find, so I can't tell whether the hidden reblogs genuinely are being posted about more by new users than established users. So far the rebuttals I've seen on that front are that reblog-additions more than one level down are not directed at the original poster anyway and shouldn't matter to them, and you can find those one-level reblog-additions in your notifications. If you've seen any other points raised about this, you're invited to let me know.
As it stands, just going off of what I've seen, I share the perspective that if there's going to be a reblog-additions feature, additions should be displayed alongside the comment section. I have not seen a convincing argument for why that information should be witheld.
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Interesting stuff, thank you for sharing!
Thanks. With things quieting down some today, I'm not sure if most of the new users have either accepted things as they are or bounced off the site, but I do hope that the reblog system is something that staff would be willing to change.
Agreed. I can understand if the intention is trying to prevent pile-ons(/harassement), but it feels more like obfuscation than anything else (including potentially obfuscating pile-ons to an ignorant audience). I also think being able to lock shares and comments does a better job of preventing (direct) pile-ons than hiding reblog information altogether. As it stands, I feel this UI helps fracture information in a way that causes more problems than it solves.
(The other possible argument I can think of is "showing numbers is bad," but I imagine they could get around that the same way they get around numbering likes and followers - "someone," "several people," etc. Also, even if there were numbers, I'm not sure how much of an issue it is in comparison to the communication issues.)
Also, tangentially, "influx" of users to Cohost is putting it mildly. According to chostcount, the number of posts made daily has risen significantly over the last few days - from 8,376 on Feb 19 into the 20,000s and 30,000s every day since.
Oh wow.
This doesn't seem useful to me in that situation either. I think it's susceptible to a similar problem I described a while back with ask messages:
So in a scenario where a person posts something incorrect (or controversial, or whatever) and 10 people all get the idea to correct them with a reblog-addition, I would prefer for those 10 people to have the reasonable opportunity to check and see if someone has already taken care of it. Otherwise, the original user is going to feel swarmed. Even someone genuinely in the wrong doesn't need to be told 10 times all at once before they even have the chance to respond. Conversely, if those 10 people are acting maliciously or targeting someone on purpose, hiding reblog additions would mean granting them plausible deniability, because how could they possibly have known?
There's already an exception for showing the number of comments, it's worth pointing out.
But like you said, it wouldn't even have to be exact numbers. It could just be a tab saying "view reblog-additions" and it would open a list of reblog additions.
Yeah, one of my biggest issues with cohost is that it does not facilitate socializing because of how disorganized a lot of the notifications are. I should be able to go back to a post and see everyone who's interacted with it so I can more easily find people to...socialize with. That's literally how social media helps me socialize. The fact I can't even do that with my own posts on cohost is a huge issue to me. It's one reason why Pillowfort is so much better than Cohost for me. Because an important part of social media for me is socializing.
They could fix this even without numbers if they just added the ability to check reblogs and likes for a post on the post itself. But really I think the numbers can be important for people too for reasons that were pointed out in the links above. They just aren't as important to me personally as the per post interaction discoverability.
Comments here on pfio make it easy to find new people I might want to follow!
comments on cohost work the same way as pillowfort comments. But they have reblog additions too. Except reblog additions are not visible from the post itself. So you can't go back to your old posts and view reblog additions.
Ah. Perhaps its obvious I've never used cohost.
I guess, untraceable reblogs would ick me out, but I've gotten used to the comment-only here on pfio.
Every now and again, I make a comment that could rise to its own post, but therecs sort of already ways to handle that. One time I made a post in response to someone else's post (I put significant effort into a code sample and wanted recognition for it), so I linked back and forth through a comment. Another time, I wrote a comment and that became a longer thread, which I thought deserved more attention, so I made a "fake read more" that jumped to the comment.
I think in pfio's comment+oroginal-only-reblog system, I wouldn't mind a "feature comment with reblog" thing, but as it is, there are ways around that.
I think both of these are good practices, for what it's worth.
Yeah, that seems like it just makes sense to me?
That said, I always wince and feel sympathy at a tumblr or twitter exodus to somewhere else, immediately complaining about the features that the people already there came here for.
It's a pretty consistent pattern with anything like this and I understand why hearing a bunch of complaints would chafe for other users (we've all been there), but at the same time... they're right. They're right about this one.
Yeah... the reason is people show up because they found a "list of alternatives to Tumblr" or somwsuch and went in blindly. It's not exactly their fault. And sometimes a fresh perspective can help ground the rest of the userbase who assumes everything that is different about the site is good.
I made my account a couple days ago and,, man it's really refreshing to see discourse where both sides have a good point. Back on tumblr, usually one or both sides would sound out of their god damn mind. Something about this argument seems somewhat productive or atleasts has some sort of goal in mind.
I've just been trying to adapt to how this site works, but it still feels a little awkward and lonely. That might change the longer I'm here though!
I'd say I'm more partial to one than the other, in this case, but I do agree with the opposition to DNI lists, so there is that. I'm also pretty indifferent to the issue of metrics there. Some people genuinely do seem to dislike them, and I can understand why they might relate to Cohost as a kind of last refuge in that respect.
Let me know if there's anything you need help with as a new user! Have you been finding enough communities to join?
Oh yeah, definitely. I'm also leaning towards easier ways to interact with eachother.
I also don't think DNI lists are very helpful, just because it puts your boundaries in the hands of strangers. I much prefer Block On Sight lists, because then you're being clear on who you don't want interacting with you but you don't have to just hope that everyone follows it.
I found a list of the most active communities and followed some of those! But it seems like the hobbies I'm most interested in have communities with hardly any active members. I've been trying to add posts to comminities to encourage the other members to post though.
I want to ask something. Is it rude to post a bunch of stuff to a community in one day? Should I spread it out a bit?
Yeah, I think that's a better policy, since it prioritizes your own agency. Of course, it also helps to spend time on a website that has decent baseline moderation in the first place.
Yeah, that happens sometimes... I think tossing in a line and seeing what happens is a good approach. Have you already found communities like MonsterOCs, Monsters-and-Creatures, WebDiscussions, and Moss n more?
It's up to you. Worth noting that for multiple reblogs of a single post (which is different from what it sounds like you're asking, but I'm just bringing this up as a sitenote), there is a reduced reblogs feature that will collapse duplicates within the same load batch.
I also recommend adding the artist username as a tag (whether that's you or someone you're reblogging from). Right now PF doesn't have a mute feature, just a block feature, so if someone is like "I don't mind this person talking to me, but I'd like to get their stuff off my feed," tagging with the username gives them an easier way to filter stuff out.
To me this paradoxical attitude is explained by "we make it difficult to find other people's interactions with you*, therefore we are a healther site."
It's such a baby-with-the-bathwater approach. No, you can't be victimized by harrassment in reblog additions if you force every user to not see reblog additions. You're not actually making a systemic fix, you're just nuking (needlessly making more difficult) an interaction feature you already had.
(I still have only approximate knowledge of how cohost works and am reacting to what i understood from this post.)
*edit to clarify.
If you're going to go out of your way to impair connecting posts (bidirectionally!) that are part of a conversation, you might as well just let users screenshot or link to each other.
They do also do that sometimes. Well, the screenshots, I mean. Links seem to be rare.
But anyway, yeah, I don't know what the original mentality was for staff implementing a reblog feature without a way to see those from the post page. For now the interpretation from the users seems to be like... it's wrong to want to know what's going on.
Do you think you'll get a callout post on Cohost for this correspondent, Coyote? (I jest, but I hope it doesn't happen again).
Also, despite reading several posts detailing Cohost, I hadn't realised the severity of the no-numbers and limited log of interaction on posts until now. I guess in previous research, topics were more complex and mainly discussed by established users who had gotten used to the site (and you had done the digging to find all relevant comments). There's nothing like newbies to point out where your own brain has adapted to a site's UI!
This comment is insane to me, however. Cohost isn't a forum, are mods looking for high-activity posts and looking for harassment? Do you give mods a shout-out if you think your post has gone too far across the site?? Are they patrolling posts before you get an influx of harassment? What if you get a bunch of annoying interaction that isn't technically harassment, but you can't easily block or shut that down and have to delete that post? (I just realised, I have no idea if Cohost is like Tumblr where a deleted post can still circulate, or if it's like here and it's gone forever). I feel it's inherent that moderating deals with the after-the-fact more than preventative measures because that aligns more with the rules and controls of the poster (privacy, etc.).
Your guess is as good as mine.
I'm with you about that as an inadequate response -- in a hypothetical scenario where Cohost didn't already have a block feature, it'd be pretty absurd to say "we don't need a block feature; the mods will keep you safe." That's just not adequate on a site of this scale,* and the same recognition deserves to be extended to other features. Like you said, there can always be stuff that users want to manage on their own without having to justify filing a mod report. That's just way too much of a bottleneck.
*My understanding is that Cohost currently has 200,000+ users (around 20,000 monthly active users) and a staff team of 4.
You know... I'm not sure either. I think I once saw a reblog-addition chain where part of the post said something like "this has been deleted," in a kind of widget style formatting, but at this point Cohost users have used CSS for so many things that I can't tell if that's an official deletion notice or if the user designed that and put that there themselves.
As someone who accidentally deleted part of a chain of posts once, I can confirm that deleting a post/share deletes it for everyone. 😅
it will create a "this post has been deleted by its original author", but later shares of it still circulate. e.g. if you write a post, someone reshares it with new text, and then you delete the op, the reshare still exists (but the op part of it gives the deleted message)
So would it look like
A: "I made an original post"
B: "A: "I made an original post"
This is my reblog with additional text"
*A deletes post*
B's reblog becomes: "A: "this post has been deleted"
This is my reblog with additional text"?
Yes.
more or less. here's an example
the reason i find zilchexo's comment especially ironic is because they personally block evaded on my post in favor of making baseless accusations at me and then went on to imply i'm silencing minorities by blocking them. so, um, we'll see what the mod squad does about harassment i guess.
Hi, that's me. I acknowledge maybe you don't have the context for what I meant by that statement and its background against what's been happening on Tumblr. What I meant was that Tumblr's negligence is why harassment is so widespread on there, and Cohost is not negligent on reports so harassment will not be normalized to begin with, and if you get it anyway it'll cut out quick.
Interesting! I wasn't planning to comment but this persons post has sent me half way to orbit:
No no no no no. Where is the data saying these UI and functionality choices in the second quote support and promote the ideals from the first quote? What are the "other important design decisions" that didn't make even an honorable mention?
Cohost appears to be turning into a fascinating case study in what happens to a social media site when the numbers are removed and notifications quieted (what seems to be the main point differentiating them from other sites). I would LOVE to study this in an academic setting (my thesis work in graduate school was designing and conducting research comparing the effectiveness of a set of user interfaces presenting the same information in different ways).
Based on the anecdotes, it seems that removing the "engagement" feedback/analytics (and maybe other "important design decisions") has created a sort of feeling of loneliness or isolation among new users, which is possibly not a factor for the very oldest of users, since many of those were likely added in batches with their friend groups when invite-only waves of onboarding was the thing.
Perhaps even that perceived isolation is what makes some older users and their friend groups feel like they're more private in posting than they actually are (which is a topic I know has come up lately). The lack of numbers might calm the "rat pressing lever for engagement" urges for some people, but at what cost?
The social conventions of the modern internet have created certain expectations of features among internet users so if something Bad™ is being removed, you have to make sure it was wholly bad or that you are supplementing any good there was from it.
And yes. Everyone hates ads, so ok, we've all been trained that online ads are vectors of malware and other annoyances, to the extent people uses devices that can't block them actually become blind to them. Which is why they are so obnoxious and annoying--to force the user to look at them. That point is pretty clear.
So I dunno! I tried my damndest to make cohost work for me for about a year and just simply gave up after a while. The last time I checked my feed it was tumbleweeds, as confirmed by my follower list having nobody posting in 3 months or more. The hype has definitely worn off.
There isn't any, that I know of. They're just saying they figure it works like that. I can respect some abstract figuring -- because I also do some of that -- but in this case I haven't found the theories very compelling. It's actually very weird to me that they've committed to replicating Tumblr's mistakes in terms of ask messages and reblog-additions.
Small point of order: there's still notifications, to be clear. You have checkboxes to decide which kind you want (likes, comments, etc.) and the only kind you can't have is notifications for second-level reblogs (more than one addition away from you). I see that you mentioned having used the site, so I'm just putting this here for the benefit of those who haven't.
Anyway--
Well prepare to get mass blocked then. The reaction was bad enough to just a blogpost. I can't imagine what would go down with a more formal academic study.
Sounds pretty relevant to the site goal of "posting, but better"!
Hmm, maybe. Here I'd been thinking of it as a combination of Cohost just being a small website (in the grand scheme of things) and just plain double standards, given the way people post about Bluesky and Mastodon over there. Your interpretation seems more charitable though.
I suppose I also took a fairly knee jerk reaction to the declaration that "this thing specifically designed to do stuff better" when yeah... nobody actually knows that.
This is true, i should have described it that way. Perhaps me being used to tumblr, the vast majority of my tumblr notifications are "reblogs" so those missing would be a much quieter experience. This would be different for those who are accustomed to the other types of feedback.
I can't decide if I would be indifferent or laugh about it, if that happened. I support people curating their own experience but also... I feel like mob-like mass blocking is such classic social media behavior (derogatory) that seeing it happen would be kind of funny. Realistically though, my feed is pretty stone cold dead there and discoverability is also very difficult anyways, so if I was blocked I doubt I would notice (and definitely wouldn't care).Anyways, it's definitely interesting how certain site presentations and features can foster or hinder certain behaviors online. Im hoping that the new players in the social media space can stand the test of time as various issues are worked out.
More than anything, I wish Cohost gave the option to see how many people have interacted with a post and how. A toggle. I'm not a "content creator" exactly and I tend to isolate myself on social media, but I still like to know what reach - if any - what I say has had... if anything, my bad habit is repeatedly checking my notifications for updates, and Cohost isn't going to break me of that.
Yeah if anything it seems like you'd have to be glued to your notifications in order to keep up with what's going on.
i linked your post on cohost with some additional thoughts
Hi X. Best of luck with managing the comment section.
the truth is that i block, and am blocked by, a significant part of Cohost Discourse Posters, because i have on several occasions posted extremely contrarian opinions about the site, including its financial outlook and the like.
at one point it was enough that i actually deleted my entire post history to start fresh (though it didn't take me long to get back into posting Bad Opinions).
sometimes i also pre-emptively block people i know are going to be shit, like that
guydork who showed up here just to say "fuck you" and then continued to follow you around on cohost harassing you (another instance of cohost's "good community").that said, it has been wonderfully quiet. disabling shares ensures that only people who already put up with my bullshit see my posts. it's a wonderful feature and it's hidden behind the post-posting meatball menu. every cohost design decision is an enigma
I'm not sure that Zilchexo is a guy specifically. But anyway, yeah, that's uhhhhh the sort of thing that comes to mind for me now when I see posts about how folks don't want Tumblr users bringing their hostility or how the new users don't need to worry when they're on Cohost because things are different there.
When I've talked about this sort of thing with Bee, she's mentioned making frequent use of the block feature too. It's a good feature, but unfortunately it works best when people don't use their side accounts to circumvent it.
Yeah I don't understand that decision either. For new users it won't be readily apparent that that feature is even there.
i used it as a general "you guys" thing, but yeah, noted. i swapped it for a gender-agnostic term.
re: side accounts... yeah. the funny thing is, as much as cohost hates numbers, the comment number exists, and it's the total number of comments, not the ones you can see. so you quickly see a discrepancy, and, ah...
(i've noticed that pillowfort seems to show a tombstone in place of users that block you with "unavailable", which imo works a lot better.)
i'll admit that i sometimes do evade. in the case of comments, the visible number and the ease of doing it make it trivial to just scan and see what's being said. (and, critically, comments from people you block are also invisible instead of just being tombstoned, so you could technically just unblock them anyway)
everything about it seems designed to encourage the worst behaviors, and i'll openly admit here that i give into them too sometimes
lol oh my god i hadn't read the entire reply chain yet i didn't realize that was a dork who got blocked, block-evading to continue to argue and whine.
i would never do that, jesus christ lmao. if i know i'm blocked i would never intentionally interact with something, take the hint
LOL I think that's the default new user avatar (a head-and-shoulders figure of a person), but I like your interpretation better. It's a compelling image."Here lies the comments of somebody separated from you with a block. RIP"I'm surprised they even have that, honestly, given everything else.
it's more of a programming term; something indicating a thing is gone. mastondon's "(Content hidden by filter)" inserts were tombstones, for example, though they had no images. they were just small not-posts in the feed.
re: comment numbers, me too. but i figure if there were no numbers, you'd never have an incentive to look, if you were viewing the post anywhere but its individual url. if you can already read the whole post in the feed, there'd be no reason unless you were specifically intending to check for comments (and repeatedly be disappointed).
the decision to make them not based on visibility also makes sense, because calculating that for every individual post would likely be nightmarish. but it leaves them with a sort of damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.
i prefer pillowfort's implementation a lot more.
Ah! Shows how much I know, I suppose.
"View comments" vs. "Leave a comment"? If memory serves I'm pretty sure "Leave a comment" is how Wordpress blogs display the comment section link if the counter is zero. But also, yeah, I can see how finding the right phrasing for that would be tricky.... And it's not like Cohost needs any more disincentives around comments.
For what it's worth, I've heard mixed perspectives on this. At least one person has told me they prefer having stuff just fully hidden over the "This comment is hidden" approach, so that they don't get reminded or tempted to look. I'm not really sure if I lean either way. But yeah, like you said, it might not be possible to accommodate all angles there.
the cool thing is that the display of blocked comments could be an option pretty trivially. you'd have a weird gap here where the indent level jumps (or you'd have to hide every child comment), but on its face hiding an empty comment _shouldn't_ be a huge issue.
the "view comments" vs "leave a comment" still gives a number, namely 0 or >=1, so you'd quickly run into the same problem if you click "view comments" and don't see anything under the post. it also makes it harder to track if new comments are on a post (since you sure can't find out any other way, lmao); the number actually is useful for that.
when blocking obfuscates a full conversation i don't really feel wigged out if someone evades it to get full context, tbh. if i block someone it's not so much "i dont want you seeing my content" its "i don't trust you to have a decent conversation with me if we disagree so i'm heading you off at the pass"; if i just don't like someone else's creations or posts i just silence them, if silencing is an option. so imo block evading just to lurk is different than block evading to be a dipnut in my mentions haha
i went back to the post body here and saw this again:
Zilchexo's post featuring the claim that "you actually don't have to worry about reach leading to harassment on cohost" because "mod squad will keep you safe"
this is the same twerp who went around block-evading to harass someone, everyone. no thinking emoji big enough
Yep. I was waiting to see if anyone would point that out.
I'm sure this is all very funny to you, troll, but anonymously speaking out against my harassment is not harassment. What you are doing, including posts from people who have made very clear their objection to being included in these, IS.
i have you blocked on cohost because you're a dipshit, but bud, imma lay it out for you.
if someone blocks you, and you ignore that block by going around it, that's violating someone's boundaries. you aren't welcome. they explicitly do not want to see or hear from you.
if i put up a sign on my front door that says "ABSOLUTELY NO ZILCHEXO", and you show up with a paper bag over your head, you are violating that block. anonymous or not doesn't matter: you aren't welcome.
on top of that, you then ignored the person telling you "hey, i blocked you, please leave", continued to comment and harass them, and then made another post on cohost whining about your block evasion account getting found out and insinuating that it had to be someone here that found out, instead of, idk, realizing that maybe you shouldn't fucking do that.
of all the people who have room to speak, you dont.
Save your worthless opinions, clownshoes. What the worms think of me would have more depth. And more literacy, seeing as you keep returning to "you have to realize you shouldn't do that" like I haven't already owned up to it.
You people act like what I did is the end of the world and nobody else is at fault, Bee is the only victim. I can't help but take note of the fact that Bee is a white woman, (as is Aria who you also carry a cross for), and I am a trans person of color. Can you explain to me why it matters that I block evaded to express frustration and violation to Bee because her worthless friend was totally indifferent to the boundaries of hundreds of people including some very vulnerable ones, but Coyote's actions and total indifference to people asking nicely or rudely not to have these posts made don't?
If Coyote responded to negative feedback, I wouldn't have block evaded. Bee was the only person I could see that could have any leverage over Coyote. I really hoped I could get her to understand how me and many, many others in the community feel. Unfortunately I wasn't listening to my better judgment, and Bee cares more about her hobby as an internet drama connoisseur than decency or respect for the communities and individuals it impacts. I never thought that my first appearance in a cringe compilation (and sixth or seventh gangstalking campaign) was going to come from sneering café pseudointellectuals who know what a Spirk is!
BTW, Bee chose not to block me after her little informant reported in, and my second reply was not unwelcome, except for my "tone".
i don't even know who this person is. the only time "aria" is even mentioned on this page is you. i genuinely have no idea what you are talking about.
you saw a "do not interact with me" sign and decided to interact. there is nothing more to explain.
your race, gender, orientation, whatever, do not give you a right to override that. that individual has expressed, explicitly, that they do not want to hear from you.
you repeatedly bring up coyote's text. i offer two things:
one, if coyote was as invested in all of this "drama mongering" and "shit stirring", there would be... signs of drama or shit stirring. the have not seen evidence of people starting from pillowfort, and then going to harass the people on cohost. i would like to see evidence of that, if you have it.
most of what i have seen on cohost is people being reactionary to the posts here, especially claiming that it focuses solely on race, and outright ignoring the many other posts this person has written on the subject of not only cohost, but similar issues on other websites.
one of the largest examples is none other than yourself, who came here explicitly to say "fuck you" in a comment, and then go on to repeatedly attack people in the comments here, and then similarly attack them in posts on cohost. the person stirring up the drama is you.
two, your posts on cohost are not private. they are public posts. you do not have a right to privacy and freedom from being commented on elsewhere. if you post something to a public place, don't be surprised when other people comment on it.
if you want things to be kept private, use a private page.
Here you go. Easy. EDIT: And another example hot off the presses. There's absolutely more in this second one's veins, where accounts that lay dormant for months mysteriously come back online to JAQ off or Make A Fucking Statement or things along those lines. (Not to mention Coyote going into comment sections of any criticism of Cohost and egging them on about how totally right they are and attempting to lead them on to other grievances against the site and its community to stir the pot.)
Again, since I have to combat the little bit of misinformation you've been, I presume on accident, spreading around, what I said was "go fuck yourself", as in leave us alone. I have not "repeatedly" "attacked" anyone, Tyrian was responding indirectly to me, quite rudely, and I was going to give you a wide berth even though you were gossiping about me and making fun of me, but then you responded to me, so I responded back. I know you're not very literate but I hope that makes sense :) Oh, and I have only attacked one person on Cohost and that is Coyote, I even went as far as not posting an ask that dragged someone else through the mud at all.
My posts actually are private to non-users, as of now. I've also blocked Coyote. If Coyote continues to broadcast my thoughts, that will be blatantly in disrespect of my best efforts to keep my posts on Cohost. And I'm sure there are many other users who have that enabled that are ending up in these cringe comps, probably users who have blocked Coyote as well since this internet popcorn is apparently a whole operation across multiple users.
I'm sorry you're not sharp enough, supposedly, to pick up on the fact that what Coyote is doing is in bad faith, but the rest of us know what it means when someone prioritizes their thick rim glasses Starbucks AirPods "research" over the comfort and feelings of hundreds, and also frankly don't need to care what kind of intent it's coming from to come to the conclusions that they hate these posts and Coyote is a, sorry, I'm being tone policed here, disreputable gentleperson. From what I've heard though, you have a history with drama, so maybe this is something you just don't respect.
considering i have questfortori blocked, you have an interesting definition of "carry a cross for".
every single interaction you have done so far has been in bad faith. you have been immensely combative, you have devolved into total name calling. i get it, but like. come on. look in a mirror at some point. you are going off on wild tangents about fucking starbucks when all people are trying to tell you is that block evading is something you shouldnt fuckin do.
somehow it got worse. here's an archive link in case it gets deleted (but missing the comments).
actual, unironic words someone wrote.
love hearing that this person who has explicitly and purposefully violated the boundary i set is not only openly talking about how they went about it, but also admits that "I got a frankly gracious warning" - so essentially, they got away with it.
hmm i can't say i feel very satisfied as the unfortunate creature on the receiving end of this behavior lol
yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyeaaahhhhhhhhhh.
it also puts their comments about how the moderators will keep you safe into context, too. yikes.
i reported the post to cohost and got "let us know if this continues" and, man, i'm pretty sure this person already admitted to doing it once before,
so this is the second time they've done it. at what point does something get acted upon? like how flagrant of a rule violation does it have to get before cohost finally does something?
i've reported them as well, but we'll have to see. ultimately mods are pretty powerless to stop total block evasion, which i respect, but i would imagine a user openly talking about the frustration they feel for being caught on it would hopefully add vital context for the situation.
i'm a big girl who can handle myself, but this sort of behavior is strongly anti-social and shouldn't be taken lightly, if just to establish precedent for users who would find it more upsetting.
starting to feel like cohost here with the comment width! pretty sure on cohost this would be something like -300px wide now. is there a word for reverse-spaghettification
my take on it is that there is value in visible moderation (even just a note from staff on the account saying "yeah we bopped this person for a day for this"). imo there's nothing you can reasonably do about "passive" block evasion where you only observe (logging out, using an alt), but active block evasion, where you actually interact with an account that is blocking you, is an obvious "hey, no, that's straight up against the rules" matter
the fact it has happened twice and we are apparently still in the warning stage is concerning. (and re: visible moderation actions... i have no way if anything was done! as best i can assume, there is no enforcement, and thus no reason for anyone else to not do it.)
frustrating
Ha. You are illiterate.
And nothing about my post was over the line, which is why I wasn't scolded (I'm not even sure who I'm supposed to be victimizing here lol??). Congrats to Coyote for being the subject of Cohost's first "callout post" (well, the first that you didn't write).
It's worth noting that xkeeper wrote the nasty post character-assassinating me a while back that she apparently deleted, but not after repeatedly justifying her abuse toward me over several instances. I wouldn't take anything she says about civility at her word.
I will say it again in a tone white people think is "civil" and "reasonable", since that's how you're able to slink about everywhere with the benefit of the doubt: these are self-crit discussions that don't involve you Coyote, and they definitely don't involve your followers. It's none of your business. Leave us alone.
Take my posts off of here now.
Cohost's power user clique getting so fucking heated at you proves everything you're saying is correct. Please keep doing this.
ETA: The above was an original off-the-cuff comment I made after scanning this and seeing blowup elsewhere, but after looking at this a bit more I wanted to post something a bit more substantial.
The discussion here about metrics, discoverability, and visibility is something that comes up rather often with Cohost. If you ask me, the last cycle of wagon-circling regarding Cohost's racial demographics has a lot to do with the over-visibility of site staff and their social circle at the significant expense of everyone else. I go a bit more in-depth here.
A lot of Cohost users adopting the "love it or leave it" stance are approaching it from the perspective that people are signing up to Cohost specifiically for its anti-metrics, "anti-social media" paradigm, but the reality is is that when it comes to social media, it's not about the protocols or the platform but the people that are using it. I've been primarily using Bluesky since leaving Cohost not because I think ATproto is a good idea or because I trust another Silicon Valley outfit to make a good, well-built social media service but because Bluesky has a strong contingency of folks I like: queer, technically inclined but not entirely serious, enjoys video games and anime, likes making jokes and sharing cute things. It's a community I seriously struggled to find on Cohost and fit in with, particularly after certain folks like Xkeeper (who is def. part of the power-user clique mentioned above) deliberately targeted and character-assassinated me.
I find Zilchexo's post about strong moderation on Cohost naturally deterring harassment (irrespective of the actual harassment they're doing right here right now) quite odd given that Predstrogen, the victim at the center of the inciting incident that started this migration wave, is getting so much anon-ask hate-mail that Cohost is "dead to [her] and sucks now". (It's also worth noting that anon-asks can be disabled on Cohost but the mechanism for doing so isn't obvious; "how does disabled a feature let MORE people use it!!") This is to say nothing about previous moderation issues, like the time my friend had a 22-hour panic attack over the deluge of sucidial ideaton posts on its feed and Cohost moderators shrugged and said it didn't break ToS despite the post absolutely breaking ToS.
Cohost's moderation team is a single person whose prior position was a trust-and-safety lead at Discord, who needs unanimous decision from the other three members of ASSC to ban somebody (Jae explained this particular stipulation somewhere in a comment thread but I don't have a link right now). If Cohost's daily posts have tripled, bringing in a userbase that is notorious for internecine combativeness, they simply put do not have the moderation capacity (and honestly I don't think they'll be able to as imo it's impossible to effectively scale moderation to social media sizes).
Why is owning the
libstechbroscohosties over the merits of a fucking website more important to you than showing people decency and respect, honoring their idea of privacy, and not being racist? I don't give a crap about Coyote's half-baked opinions, or making fun of the site to their followers, I care about my posts on sensitive subjects being used to their ends.check this shit out
Cute but calling me a hypocrite because "it's all public information anyone can find" is not convincing. There's also old stuff in there accusing 18-year-old me of being a pedophile, so I don't really appreciate seeing that tbh.
Predestrogen accidentally enabled asks from people off the website, and disabled it again. This seems like a UI issue to me, not a community issue.
I thought the whole edgyposting situation with Aria was stupid and I regret that it happened but I maintain that the original post was not against Cohost's terms of service or against any TOS that could reasonably be enforced. The OP eventually put a content warning on the post voluntarily before mods weighed in, and I think that instruction should be as far as what moderation should demand, if anything. Unfortunately there's no moderation regime that's going to account for every edge case, such as having a 22 hour panic attack over... the thing that I won't repeat just to be safe. It's unreasonable to expect a website to accommodate everyone. Pillowfort doesn't. Bluesky sure as hell doesn't.
I said it elsewhere, but what I really meant with my post was that the Tumblr situation of mods ignoring blatant harassment campaigns, and harassment specifically (that's the bullet point I put it in), would not be replicated on Cohost.
I guess my faith in Cohost's ability to scale is somewhat blind and based on the idea that site culture and design will do most of the work. I can agree that it's a reasonable concern.
I don't think someone who uses an alt to dodge a block and continue harassing someone like you did to bee, or comes into a post on here just to say "fuck you" like you did in Coyote's last post about Cohost, has much of a leg to stand on when demanding others comply to their whims in the name of ending harassment. you made the sandwich
What I said was "go fuck yourself" as in "leave us alone". I had no idea who Bee is or why they had me blocked, no memory of ever speaking to them and I'd bet dollars to donuts that I hadn't. I literally had not made the bespoke sandwich at the time that I became aware of Coyote. But now you are just taking cheap shots at me instead of listening to my perspective as a person of color who has been cybergangstalked about six times. Strange considering how much empathy you seem to have for your white friend. Go, um, have a nice day... turdlord?
None of that matters. You violated a boundary that Bee had set, and quite deliberately so, by posting from a gimmick account you spun up a year prior and left untouched since. There is absolutely nothing accidental about you posting on Bee's page like this.
People block me all the time. People I know for a fact I've never spoken to even once will block me. I have no idea why they'd block me, though I might make an educated guess and say it's because they didn't like a more controversial statement I might've made at some point. Would I and my rejection-sensitive dysphoria like to know? Sure! Am I entitled to that information? Fuck no.
I don't dig to find out why I got blocked and I certainly don't evade a block to tell them about how stupid they are. You can pretend this is about race all you want but while that tactic might work on Mastodon it won't work here.
Well aren't you such a woke little ally. No, your lack of empathy for me is actually racially coded, even if you think it isn't- it would be racially coded even if you had no idea what my race was.
Forgot to mention: I also don't care why Bee had me blocked, and have made no effort to find out why, nor do I have any intention of talking to her again in any circumstances outside this one.
Goodbye.
Hiii, can you remove my posts (@Osmose, of course) from this compilation and future ones? I don't want to be included in them.
Hey osteophage what's your kiwifarms @?
More seriously, I guess, I'm in the awkward position of 1, not wanting to make my account private, 2, wanting to ask that you never fucking include any of my posts in this shit, and 3, not being able to properly do that bc I'd prefer not to identify myself and draw your attention to my account, as I don't actually believe that you'd honour that request
So with that in mind, I guess all I can do is ask you to stop doing this entirely and hope in the meantime that I don't catch your attention over there. Like shit man, at least the old somethingawful "let's all gawk at the weirdos on tvtropes" threads had "don't touch the poop" rules
clap clap clap clap clap
It's seriously not worth telling them which one you are BTW, I'm with you on that. I made the mistake of giving it away on Cohost and now I'm A Person Of Interest and just straight up being harassed by goons. (And yes the notion of goon squads from a website called Pillowfort where they mostly talk about slash fic is funny to me too.)