This post has content warnings for: pillowfort, the usual suspects.
![CrillWave](data:image/svg+xml,<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="222" height="160"><rect fill-opacity="0"/></svg>)
the ace of tag team social media
- he/him they/them
- kermix.bandcamp.com/
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in reply to @CrillWave's post:
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at this point no amount of positive new developments will divert these people from their chosen path of being fucking human tarpits about this site, they have long since decided that it and the people who make it are Bad and Deserve To Fail
I think that a proper amount of perspective on something like this (both pro and con and everything in between) is nigh impossible for a battle-royale-quantity of people to obtain without an expenditure of energy and focus and research that is usually time better spent on something more constructive. there are too many personalities with too many fingers in too many pies for anyone to be able to garner the attention and the trust to reign it all in, and *claps hands together* that's social media
there's probably also a dilemma of, i don't know, equivalence? is that the right word? when it comes to shitting on twitter, bsky, other ostensibly large and arguably more-openly-capitalist landscapes, and a site being developed by a team I can count on one hand who don't strike me as hucksters and thusly don't have that kind of business experience. and there's a world of difference between critiquing the journey of cohost as the uphill struggle that it is, and raging like you bought tickets to Fyre Fest
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As the author of the blog post, I am not a Pillowfort user myself. I had an account at one point but I used it to break the site and I'm pretty sure it got removed. I do in fact have a lot to say about the current financial update and you're welcome to look at it on my page.
yeah, this isn't to talk shit about your post at all. this was more to highlight how the game of telephone and people resharing to different audiences elicits different reactions, intentional or not
Not sure if you mean the financial update itself or my post, but my post was very much meant for that kind of audience as much as one here or anywhere else. The point was to discuss why I, personally, myself, feel the way I do about how Cohost has been handling their financial transparency. It's a lot of numbers, but it's actually not really a post about math as it is a post about my feelings about how things have been here. I actually wrote it pretty deliberately so I could share it with people who aren't on Cohost who need context for what I'm talking about when I discuss it, as well as people here since not everyone has kept up with the entire history of financial posts on the site. I probably have a lot in common with the WebDiscussions community on PF, because Websites and The Social Media Landscape mean a lot to me (since these sites and their communities are a huge part of our lives now, that's why I take them really seriously).
sorry, that was intentionally vague because both your post and staff's are being discussed in places! which is fine.
I've also talked somewhere about how a lot of discussion (maybe, again, only by a vocal few) can just sound mean intentional or not, and sometimes it can be hard for even a seasoned veteran of Social Media Wars to present an analysis without it sounding (to someone, not everyone!) as if it's being mean or holding a grudge. and the further it gets shared and replied to, and shared with more commentary, the more impossible that is to control, which was most obvious on Twitter (and came to a head most rapidly, and often) with its archaic character limits.
I don't go to Twitter any more, and usually when I talk about frustrating things here or with friends on Discord, I try to remember to extrapolate something constructive out of the discussion at the end of it all, so I'm not just venting a pile of frustration and making my friends read it. it's generally a good exercise for me personally (and helps me to end or prevent anxiety attacks!), and I think it's just good writing practice too.
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Have to admit I'm not seeing the problem? The webdiscussions community you mentioned (https://www.pillowfort.social/community/WebDiscussions) has a lot of posts discussing Bluesky, posts about discord, posts about Kickstarter, DeviantArt, Twitter, and cohost.
It's not like cohost is being singled out, and I don't see anybody celebrating problems cohost's been having, just discussing that they're happening.
I appreciate that; that's why I say how it looks "from the outside" because as someone who isn't present and/or active on any of those other platforms (and has no obvious use for them), I'm not really going to be looking for info about them. the only thing I can really say at that point is something that's been stated elsewhere, that there's not a lot of financially solvent platforms in the first place, and I personally got exhausted in harping on what was wrong with all of them and chose to instead park myself here and see how it goes.
so for me personally it becomes very easy to only see a post with a lot of people being angry about the place I chose to park myself, and it did feel bad for a minute. I get it though
to hopefully further support my stance, the first person to get noticed by the greater cohost faithful for their meticulous noticing of users and arguably being snippy about the whole thing:
had previously spoken about cohost functionality they disagreed with (which is completely understandable, and is probably on the giant list of things to address as a userbase scales);
inspired me to take a deep breath and try to be constructive about it, while still conveying my exhaustion with small groups of loud angry people;
and then multiple people ultimately riled me enough to comment in more depth about how this mood propagates to those who read it, with a lot of citations -- a format that I understand but I also detest how much time and anxiety-ridden energy it requires of me. (that tongue-in-cheek attitude may or may not come across in that post.)
the latest straw for me is realizing, on clicking the Rules link provided at the WebDiscussions community page, that the aforementioned user is actually one of this community's two moderators!
so hopefully you could understand how I'd arrive at the opinion that perhaps a disgruntled cohost user was, however unconsciously, leveraging another platform over which they had more control, to vent about cohost to an audience they may not have any intention of dissuading from being even more infuriated, under the umbrella (guise?) of a moderated in-depth analysis, where none of the people involved -- on pillowfort or cohost, including myself -- are necessarily qualified, nor remotely required, to do the due diligence of journalism that more or less doesn't exist any more anyway