a postscript →

Cohost So White: A Comprehensive Record of the Matter of Race on Cohost.org

Alyaza Birze (August 15, 2024)

Table of contents:
Early racial issues (Demography • Whisper networks) | The Nazi incident | "Neotenous" Asians | Racial Interregnum | Cohost So White | Orientalism | Angela Carini, White Tears, and the one mod system | An Epilogue, of sorts

This is a document which attempts to weave, to the best of my individual abilities, the record of racial issues on cohost.org into one singular document. The optimistic intent of this document is to enter into the communal record a definitive account of the website, its racial issues, and what it can avoid in the future. I have, to the best of my abilities, attempted to get permission from major participants—in some cases however this was not immediately possible.

I must also caveat this immediately on a number of accounts. Firstly: this is assuredly an incomplete picture; Cohost is (for some intentional reasons, others unintentional) antithetical to discovery, archival, and discerning a coherent timeline. It is likely that several foundational posts to these discussions are unavailable or were overlooked because I could not find them. Secondly: I am relatively old to the site but not anywhere a near a founding member. As a result I am unclear on when the first racial issues with the website began to manifest, although largely familiar with those that came after my joining of the site c. November of 2022. Finally: there is the matter of being a participant in a number of these conversations—I am not a neutral observer. To a degree this will reflect judgements or prioritization on my part that another writer might not make. Still, I consider this a fundamentally sound document and I hope you agree with that.

Early racial issues

I am not clear on when exactly racial issues began to manifest on Cohost in a negative way (at least in the way they currently do). My join date means I was not around for the first nine months of Cohost—and as mentioned above the site is largely antithetical to discovery, precluding my ability to uncover any early relevant posts. Any issues in the beginning may also be lost to time and entropy at this point—or, of course, they may not have happened at all.

But I would assert that even in the absence of receipts, inference is on the side of racial issues beginning in the website's early history and laying the groundwork of contemporary problems. This can be inferred by way of the demography and culture of Cohost, and through the existence of whisper networks about Cohost.

Demography and culture of Cohost

While there has never been a Cohost census to my knowledge, it can be trivially inferred that Cohost is incredibly white. In all probability—taking into consideration Cohost's contemporaries, and the demographics of even mainstream platforms like Reddit—any such census would find a userbase that is at least 80% white by self-identification.¹ Among active membership the number of visible minorities is likely in the low-triple digits, if that.

This presents the most obvious vector through which racial issues might develop: the few minorities in an environment like Cohost's are effectively tokenized and are likely to be tokenized for the duration of their using the site. It can obviously be quite lonesome and alienating to be the only minority in a room full of white people. Any issue you might discuss is likely to be overshadowed by the opinions of majority groups—and even when you are given a platform through which to speak, the rationalism, ignorance, or malice of majority groups that often follows from speaking is even more alienating. Many small, alternative social media platforms have struggled with this dynamic,² and it is unlikely Cohost was ever an exception to this.

In terms of peer websites, perhaps the most one-to-one comparison with Cohost demographically is Mastodon—a service which is clocked as overwhelmingly white, queer, leftist, and techie. Cohost, in fact, has many former Mastodon users among its ranks. But this presents another vector from which racial problems could eventually develop—not only demographically but culturally. For about as long as it's existed, Mastodon has been criticized for how its adopters handle minority issues and minorities speaking about those issues. Racism, bigotry, and all-around fumbling of minority issues is such a consistent pattern that anti-racist courses exist for instance admins and multiple "running an instance"/or "moderating your instance" guides linger on how to handle such situations. The overall culture of Mastodon on this subject is, in short, quite bad—and seems little improved from when serious complaints began in 2017.

So I think this follows quite simply: Cohost is a very white space, which is likely to beget a very culturally white community, which is likely to ultimately result in alienation for minority users. Moreover, Cohost has similar demographics to Mastodon. If Mastodon's demographics result in a culture where minority issues are in a never-ending struggle to be taken seriously, we would expect similar issues to eventually occur on Cohost. Particularly, we would expect this to occur given Cohost's userbase not merely being demographically similar but also having a degree of cross-pollination with Mastodon.

Whisper networks

Less demonstrable—but evident in how visible minorities speak about race and Cohost—are the existence of whisper networks about Cohost. These are largely disillusioned to actively negative about the site, and they generally imply a history of people being alienated from Cohost due to its disproportionately white demography and how the userbase speaks about minority issues. As just one illustration, @renkotsuban (Renkon) noted in a June 19, 2024 post that:

Getting anonymous asks and Discord friend requests and Masto follows from Asians/Asian diaspora telling me that exactly this happened to them when they brought up Orientalism \#onhere, right down to being accused of being a cop and trying to "cancel marginalized people" and reverse racism and "the silent majority disagrees with you" A lot of them left cohost.³

Other networks like this have undoubtedly been alluded to or can simply be inferred from both on- and off-site posting. There are many old friend groups on Cohost or which previously were on Cohost—and public Cohost meta can be readily found on Pillowfort or Mastodon due to cross-pollination between these platforms and Cohost itself.

The Nazi incident (May 13, 2023)

But even if you disagree with some of the presumptions and premises advanced above—or even disagree categorically with all of the above—the history of racial issues on-site is one that still dates back at least a full year as of writing. The first of these to really challenge the site was the Nazi incident, which occurred on May 13, 2023 and bears a striking similarity to subsequent failures.

In short: around May 9, 2023, Jewish user @YuushaRuby (Ruby) began to be viciously harassed offsite by Nazis. By May 12, one of these Nazis—a "Mike Moore"—made a Cohost account in an apparent effort to harass Ruby on-site. Ruby reported the account, and then subsequently posted a public screencap of said account with the observation that "One of these people from the “freespeechextremist” instance just tried following me on cohost, I guess I’m getting stalked everywhere by nazis now, oh to be Jewish online!"⁴ The account's linktree page included other accounts on Gab (neo-Nazi Twitter) and Parler (a now-defunct "free-speech" Twitter alternative almost exclusively used by the broader far-right); plainly, it did not make any attempt to be plausibly deniable, nor hide that its owner was a fascist attempting to harass Ruby.

Nevertheless, Ruby's initial report led to no action against the account. On May 13, @kaara (Kara) closed report for the following reason:

I worry about the links for sure, and it's something we want to keep a close eye on, but absent any evidence on Cohost, I don't think that alone quite constitutes action. Please let us know if anything comes up.⁵

Ruby—obviously surprised and extremely upset by the lack of action—then took to Cohost, posting the closed report and adding the commentary that "...I tell you people from this clearly nazi instance have been calling me a kike and tranny for 72 hours and someone from that instance follows me on cohost and that’s not actionable? Okay, whatever, I think I’m gonna leave cohost, see ya!"⁶ (Ruby later reversed course on leaving the website, but the incident has clearly served as a disillusioning one.) Her post quickly gained circulation, and the failure to ban Mike Moore was widely panned and criticized—albeit with charitability to the staff—in one of the first "sitewide discourses" I was present for.

It seems probable that community backlash led to some sort of reassessment of this decision (although it should be noted Kara disputes this). Approximately one hour after Ruby's post the Mike Moore account was banned permanently, with Kara stating under Ruby's post that "After some internal discussion we decided to take action and remove the user. Thanks for bringing this to our attention. ... Purely off-site behavior is a difficult thing for anyone to assess, and it's going to be an area where sometimes we won't have a 100% hit rate. ... Cohost is not a home for antisemites, transphobes, racists, etc..., or really any fucking extreme-right chud."⁷ Kara, on its blog, also acknowledged that "It's not my place to tell anyone how to act, and I think it is more than reasonable to get a little upset at us if we make a bad call and to call us out for it." but still pled for good faith and grace from the community on moderator decisions.⁸ Other users largely concurred with this assessment and that call.

Perhaps the most exemplifying quote of this period is one from @ShugoWah, who stated: "we have to got to unlearn the arguably-valid trauma response of assuming that every tiny mistake is the first step down the slippery hill to bullshit. at least here, on this tiny website made by a group of pals." At least two users—one of whom was Ruby—actually apologized for some of their conduct toward Kara during the incident,⁹ and Cohost as a whole came out of the affair seemingly more confident in its staff than before. But a closer examination makes it clear that the event shook the confidence of several minority members. Renkon, for instance, seems to have first lost confidence with reporting here. In a reply to @lori (Lori) they write in part:

[...]I got a reply from support the next morning saying that I shouldn't join in on mass-reporting, which I thought was a bit unfair since 1) it makes it sound like [Ruby] was calling for people to report when she hadn't and 2) how the heck was I supposed to know that's what was going to happen. It makes me hesitate to report stuff in future since it might get a ton of reports and I just don't know it (or in this case, anticipate it).¹⁰

"Neotenous" Asians (June 5-6, 2023)

Much of the grace the community gave to moderation would be erased less than a month later when, on June 5, Cohost published the extremely controversial "community guidelines update june 2023" which delved into the website's position on cub/lolisho. Amidst a broader, venomous debate of where the guidelines should fall on these came a series of now-infamous posts by @a-lot-of-buckets asking such questions as "how do you fairly account for some people being more neotenous, like Asians?"—essentially, as Renkon put it over a year later, "[...]going 'but what if the artwork is of Asians, who are neotenous? what if I get dinged for CSAM when really I just fetishize the Orientals?'"¹¹

These phrenology-like posts, it must be stressed, did not go unnoticed at any point. User @thewaether (Kate Barrett) called them racist and directly argued against them, while user @dieting-hippo called the person making the posts a clown at the time they were made. They were remarked upon by Lori in July 2023—a month after the cub/lolisho debate—in a series of Mastodon toots where Lori also said they were reported several times. According to Renkon, they were reported at least twice more in 2024. But none of the comments were removed (nor the person making them apparently banned) until one year later on July 13, 2024. The only moderator action taken in the moment was to hide @dieting-hippo's comments plus one parent comment, and to admonish @dieting-hippo for insults. In part because of this he apparently left the site. Renkon, similarly, gave up on reporting things as a result the exchange.

Kara, speaking retrospectively to Renkon on the subject, stated that:

[...]at the time, we were skittish about removing comments that had anything to do with either side of the argument, even if they sucked. the topic was extremely controversial and we were afraid to take action on anything due to the vitriol we would inevitably face if we seemed like we were censoring or controlling the conversation. as for why it took us a while to get to it this second time around, I don't have an excuse. it sat in the backseat while we dealt with some other things.¹²

It is hard to disagree with this assessment.

The cowardice toward these comments—and conversely, the moderating of pushback against them—was undoubtedly harmful to the visible minority community at the time. Renkon's belief was that as a result, "A lot of [POC] didn't want to stick around to see if things would get better. They just left." And my own anecdotal experience supports this assertion: on February 4, 2024, I observed that "i've only seen my own BHM posts, which is sad because i do remember seeing other contributions circulate last year when BHM rolled around." But due to a lack of data we can only speculatively infer this. What we can observe, however, is that this situation dealt a crippling blow to confidence in the report system. Cynicism and outright suspicion that reporting did little—if anything—was confirmed by this debacle and would become a theme with future blow-ups.

Racial Interregnum (June 2023 - February 2024)

For a significant period following the "neotenous Asians" debacle there were no major incidents that I am aware of—perhaps in no small part because of the damage that event did to the visible minority community. Actually, in my limited examination, race seemed to come up seldom if at all on the website for a period between June of 2023 and February of 2024. But this should not be confused for the absence of racism; arguably it was the most visible byproduct of it on Cohost. Many visible minorities seem to have either left the website, started avoiding racial posting, or ceased to visibly identify themselves racially. (My own experience during this period was getting scolded for not content warning my experience with racism—and then getting blocked for explaining why—which I noted still irritated me several weeks after it happened.)

As far as I can tell, the initial catalyst for change was my widely-circulated Black History Month series, and several additional race-related posts I made during the course of that series. In particular, my aforementioned February 4, 2024 post and its follow-ups (in which I [posited the site selecting for "a certain variety of white tech queer") and other such factors influenced the site's whiteness) seem to have led to a visible minority revival on Cohost. My observation prompted a noteworthy addendum from @chimerror and a proposal from @TrashBoatDaGod (fleshed out further by @Malusdraco (Malus)) which became the genesis for the @cohostminorityfeed account. Because these posts gained a significant amount of traction they also served as a major networking opportunity for visible minorities—many active Cohost users who are visible minorities seem to have become aware of each other through the posts.

Unfortunately, this revival of visible minority posting also coincided—through no fault of its own—with another landmark case of Cohost's racial issues manifesting.

Cohost so White (February 6-15, 2024)

Late on February 6, 2024, as my race-related posts circulated, @Keeble posted a fairly unremarkable and wholly unrelated opinion that "people join social media sites to scroll, not to post." The next day, February 7, 2024, this opinion became a fully-fledged essay on the subject of user retention, Cohost, and its lack of user diversity. This essay was remarkable and almost immediately became controversial on the site—but largely not for reasons related to its main argument.¹³ Instead, large swathes of the website took issue with Keeble's assertion that Cohost's primary audience was "tech-oriented furries/queer tech people/the sorts of people who incorrectly assume all trans girls are programmers because they always end up in places where they meet programmers." This despite the fact that I and others had made a similar point just days earlier without pushback, and that this critique from visible minorities was certainly older than my own distillation of it.

There is no way to be certain that race being omitted aided the explosion of opinion on the topic, but it is noteworthy that—now lacking the racial component which had previously been vital to the subject in the first place—debating the validity of this assertion only here became a "sitewide discourse". Nowhere in the angry posts about Keeble's assertion; confused posts about why a website needed to be "for everyone;" or in the one liners about nerds dunking on other nerds is it apparent that this same subject, just days earlier, invited discussions about how to make Cohost less white and more visible minority friendly. The subject was quickly and collectively—in the words of @sharksonaplane (Shark)—"[run] through a bleaching process until it's a completely different topic."

This was so apparent even at the time that self-identified white users observed this phenomenon; @virtualmarmalade for example scolded users that "deflecting criticism by saying 'well it's not technically accurate so it's not really a problem (so stop talking about it)' is extremely white people shit." But much of the effort to reinsert race back into the conversation was, unsurprisingly, done by visible minorities. Beyond Shark's observation of topical bleaching, @AtFruitBat (Mae) attempted to explain the importance of connecting white and techie in talking about the site's demographics:

[...]I think "tech" as a background in the current site discourse about why Cohost is so white, is a factor because many tech-related industries still skew white. Many other industries too, but we're on a social media platform in particular, which is an environment that depends on tech. Whiteness is still what most people know of the culture of these industries.¹⁴

@ImplausiblyJosh (Josh), similarly, speculated on the reason why the topic rhetorically shifted in the way it did, saying:

it's extremely clear when people are dropping the "white" from "white tech" userbase. when the dialogue shifts from "how can we retain and encourage non-white tech users" to "how could it possibly be too tech, _you_ make your own feeds!" or responding to someone's scarecrow of the topic, the shift is so clear. [...] maybe it's too hard to argue against the site being extremely white. maybe the reality makes you uncomfortable. maybe you don't care, and would rather talk about something you care about. maybe you only saw other people make that shift, and have started talking about their scarecrows. any number of reasons for this funny little shift in dialogue!¹⁵

Users like @maddievision (Maddie Lim) opined at lesser-length that the situation "feels very fedi/masto-esque"), and @atax1a (alex tax1a) mused that "watching y'all argue about whiteness around us, when this has been our perennial criticism, sure is a very cohost experience". @hydrochaeris pointed out that "the thing ppl seem 2 be in opposition to is the 'ragebait' and 'doomscroll' aspects of twitter rather than say the racism and antiblackness of twitter.". And there were of course my own annoyed posts on the matter in which I lamented the mass-conflation that was taking place and attempted within my own sphere of influence to steer the conversation back toward something generally productive. But as is true of many Cohost blow-ups, the topic simply becoming 'played out' is what eventually settled the matter down. By February 10, few if any posts were made about the subject—at least, objecting to Keeble's point.

Instead, the broader discussion shifted to other issues. On February 12, users on Cohost noticed that this debacle (and other Cohost debacles before it, some of which were not related to racism) was being chronicled on Pillowfort. Much of the subsequent discussion around this—which was its own "sitewide discourse"—is of no significance to this post. What is, though, are the concerns visible minorities in particular had about this type of chronicling. @ratslap perhaps best summarized these concerns on February 12, saying: "idk how i feel about someone linking a bunch of poc's posts about racism to talk about site happenings or w/e, because that has the potential to end pretty bad. it seems so careless." @hydrochaeris concurred the next day, February 13, writing that "those kinds of posts will Always garner more backlash, judgment, and vitriol onto the black people and poc being roped in without their consent, regardless of what u think op's intentions are or whatever op posted in the past that u might have agreed with."

Despite the widespread backlash, a number of accounts on Cohost—some cross-posters to Pillowfort, some not—nonetheless attempted to defend the chronicling. And amidst this, one particular account that ostensibly sought to express solidarity with Cohost's visible minorities stood out: @usernamenotrequired11 (Usernamenotrequired). Subsequent events would later reveal this account already had a negative reputation and had likely already been reported,¹⁶ but the account's weird behavior became particularly clear to visible minorities on this occasion. Over the course of several days it attempted to play users of Cohost—especially visible minority users—against each other; in one breath it called the website "so white" but in another breath vehemently defended the Pillowfort chronicling and called the backlash to it racism.

@hydrochaeris was seemingly the first to note and block this account on February 13, pointing out that it was "v funny to be making fun of liberals for being anti poc bringing up their fears and anger and then when poc bring up their fear and anger suddenly ur chill defending the person whos made them afraid and angry???" Shortly thereafter Shark also noted, blocked, and shamed the account in a longer post that concluded "Sharing that is practically an admission that his stake in this is just to play both sides." I concurred with both of their assessments on February 14. Finally, either late February 14 or early February 15, @zlchxo (Zilchexo) coaxed out of the account demographic information: Usernamenotrequired's owner was white, but asserted "at least I know my place, unlike some of the bigoted fucks on here." This obviously cemented the block-and-ignore approach from the visible minority community (which became common guidance thereafter).

Given its suspicious nature, its clear history of notoriety, and its conduct during February 2024, the Usernamenotrequired account probably should have been permanently banned. It is now known that it >was reported at least once (probably more) for its shitstirring behavior around discussion of Pillowfort—and this is in addition to presumably being reported prior to February 2024. But unfortunately (and for reasons that are not clear) no action seems to have been taken against the account. That failure would have ramifications in the future.

Unlike the "neotenous" Asians debacle, this incident did not seemingly have large ramifications on Cohost's visible minority community. The actual discussion eventually bent back toward a community blind-spot about race issues—a productive point to talk about that could be fixed with time and effort. But it does appear that, to some visible minorities, the lack of action on Usernamenotrequired affirmed or reaffirmed that attempting to resolve things through official channels was pointless.

Orientalism (June 16 - July 12, 2024)

Despite the revitalization of visible minorities on Cohost (or perhaps because of it)—and even with the formation of a loose nexus of minority posters on the site—instances of racism or flatly weird behavior toward minorities continued to take place. Just limited to my own personal experiences, having an open ask box invited comments like "A thinly-veiled lashing out at white people for being white and having an opinion is, in itself, a type of racism." or unsolicited trauma-dumping and white guilt that eventually obliged me to turn off the anonymous ask feature. Other visible minorities including Renkon and Shark did likewise at various points for similar but not identical reasons.

There was also the highly-publicized instance where @jesncin (Jes & Cin), a friendly comics artist on the site, was called a "fragile picrew weirdo" for politely requesting a white user not be so condescending with their feedback. (This same white user, perhaps a month later, would go on to arrogantly talk over myself and other minority users in an unrelated conversation. My potentially incorrect recollection is that they analogized calls to listen to non-white users to a form of "ethnonationalism".) Barquq, who recently left Cohost, also documents a number of examples of racism or weird behavior including: "spending more time being smug about not keeping up with racism on a website than dealing with it [and] Describing a POC's criticism about a website as wielding a gun". Assuredly there are other incidents like this I am missing.

This all perhaps foreshadowed what was to come: the over-month-long Orientalism fiasco, prompted by an innocent post Renkon made on June 16, 2024. That post, spring boarding off an already-ongoing discussion of orientalism of Japan in gaming, used the initial example of Wholesome Games. As Renkon observed, the studio had:

published two games so far, and they both
have Japanese titles
use a lot of Japanese imagery (Shinto shrines/torii, outdoor onsen, Japanese writing, etc)
are super cutesy and childlike, if not outright designed for children
were made by non-Japanese teams
And I'm not saying these games are bad or horrible (I played and loved both, and even recommended them to people!) but boy oh boy Wholesome Games having 100% of their output be This sure is a STATEMENT.

Renkon added that to even speak about orientalism—even in such an obvious case as this one—made them nervous, because:

[...]in the past this has never gone well because everyone wants to tell me why actually their pet game is the exception to the rule, or that because Japanese media is also racist (it really is!!!) then racist Western media about Japan is Fine Actually, or "Japanese people LIKE being objectified in this way, YOU'RE the racist for deciding they should be outraged," or whatever other annoying shit.¹⁷

Unfortunately, and while reception to the post was quite positive (especially from other visible minorities, who appreciated Renkon speaking on the subject), the lengthy "sitewide discourse" that followed proved this fear very correct. Within hours of the post visible minorities received dismissiveness and racist harassment. One post, sent to a white user for feedback and intercepted by Renkon, argued among other things that "Many asian aesthetics have been commercialized for centuries now, and have become part of the liberal global exchange of cultures. [...] you are not going to be able to reverse any damage there, in the end it's just a video game."¹⁸ Elsewhere, Renkon posted an ask sent to a Japanese user which asserted Japanese culture had become "so public" and that Japan was "an Imperialist nation not long ago" (as if this had any relation to Renkon's post).

Subsequent responses proved even more upsetting and disillusioning—not only to Renkon but to other users who had responded positively to the initial post. @BunchesofBees, the "technical co-director at KO_OP," all but insinuated Renkon was acting like a cop and that people were "fed up with a vision of social justice where they constantly have to be afraid of saying the wrong thing, expressing themselves in the wrong way or it's going to become a call-out post." Game developer @notnull (Miles) went to the mat for his opinion that "I just don't really see why using [non-English] gibberish would be harmful on its own" even as others patiently attempted to explain that to him. And @Lilith-Rose—in one of the lowest points of the "sitewide discourse"—opted to "play devil's advocate" and argued at length that much of the orientalism Renkon identified was not orientalism at all, and was instead an overreaction. All the while Renkon continued to be bombarded by anons trying to catch them in some contradiction or trying to find circumstances in which orientalism would be "good".

Elsewhere on the site, @yrgirlkv (Kavita)—who had very little with Renkon's post and only briefly touched on the subject—was harangued by one anon over the matter. A similar ask, likely from the same person, was apparently sent to at least three other Asian users unprompted. Mae, presumably seeing Miles' posts and the general vicious backlash to Renkon, also felt obliged to explain—at length and through personal experience—why non-English gibberish was so hurtful:

A thing that has happened to just about every East/SE Asian diaspora person/immigrant I know is you'll come across some people who look like they're going to speak to you, and then they open their mouths, and they say "ching-chong, ching-chong, ching-chong", like it's a made up version of what they think your language sounds like. [...] Somebody says you have no language, so you spend twenty years proving that you do. And then some random white person comes up to you on the street, and it's "ching-chong, ching-chong, ching-chong" again. [...] If you don't feel your language is disrespected or devalued when someone does that kind of thing with you (if they even do! I can't think of a time when I've seen white people randomly subjected to that kind of behaviour), I would suggest that that's because there isn't a power differential in operation. You probably aren't in a position where you're minoritised, or where there's a serious social demand on you and your people to continually prove that you're also equally human, that you also have culture, that your culture also has value, and so on.¹⁹

And still other users posted their personal stories and complicated feelings with Japanese-inspired media, such as this post by @MobileSuitLilah (Lilah) and this one by @ninecoffees (Maddie)—all to, in essence, justify their fairly tame criticisms of orientalism in Japanese-inspired media.

In this light, Renkon's exasperated comment on June 16 that "If you've ever wondered why you sometimes see posts complaining about cohost being a super white place, here's why." seem something of an understatement. Other users concurred. @yumeirochaser called Cohost's progressivism "surface level". @TrashBoatDaGod wryly called those objecting to Renkon "concerned citizens white." And @psilocervine, a white user, expressed anger at the site's inability to maturely handle racial discussions:

[...]asian posters are getting shit on because they dared to go "hey there's a pretty big orientalism problem in indie games" (there fucking is) and black posters are getting shit on because they dared to point out the overwhelming whiteness of this site's culture (which there fucking is) and this is a pattern that has repeated enough that it's no longer a coincidence? [...] I've seen people leave this site over this shit a whole fuckin' bunch. I've tried to keep up with a lot of them because they've largely been cool as fuck people. but they're cool as fuck people who are being pushed out of cohost because of some real fuckin' nasty site culture issues that nobody seems to want to address²⁰

Despite all of this, only one ban was apparently levied against a user involved with Renkon. That ban went to @Lilith-Rose—the worst offender, and someone with a prior record that apparently included a post to the tune of "We should move everyone out of Israel/Palestine and then nuke the entire area so people stop fighting over the land". And examining her case makes it clear that the perception of reporting things as pointless allowed her to skate for so long despite posts of that kind. Shark, for instance, noted that she simply blocked Lilith instead of reporting her because—as a result of previous reports—"I guess I didn't have any faith that [Cohost staff] would do anything about it."

This belief would become even more understandable when some days later on June 26 or June 27, 2024, Renkon began to talk about why they had not reported the awful anonymous asks they received.²¹ In short: back in 2023 they saw the lack of action from multiple reports against the "neotenous" Asians poster (refer again to Lori, who corroborates this) and it disillusioned them with the reporting system. At the time of this June 26/27 post, all of the offending comments were still up and the user who posted them was apparently not banned. Renkon ultimately reported them again—and again, no action was taken until July 13, when Kara (as mentioned above) acknowledged the cowardice and removed the posts and the poster.

This discussion was also revitalized by an unusual turn of events: an unrelated and brewing discourse about the accessibility or lack thereof of "yingletspeak"²² The number of posters who came to the immediate defense of yinglets served initially as a stark contrast with the experience Renkon had just a week or two earlier to begin with (which I commented on number of times). But what drew the yinglet discussion into the racism discussion was an ill-advised post making comparison between yingletspeak and AAVE (African-American Vernacular English) or patois languages. This post read, in part, "A closer analogy [to Yinglish] might be something like AAVE, which is still English, rather than a separate language."

Needless to say: already upset visible minority members (and several fellow travelers) felt quite affronted by numerous aspects of analogy. Posts by @wgwgsa, Renkon (who implored people to "stop appropriating the real oppression of real human beings for your right to post like a fantasy character from a webcomic"), and Barquq (who simply found it morbidly funny and absurdist) personify the general feeling. Lori, perhaps speaking more bluntly for many, explicitly called yingletspeak "people posting in a made up accent some fictional little dweebs speak in a webcomic" and resented the incredibly disrespectful nature of this entire segment of the incident.

Renkon's conclusion in the aftermath of all of this was bleak, writing:

I would simply like to use this webbed site the same way everyone else does: to post cat pictures and talk to my friends and reblog cool stuff. But now I can't, because I've outed myself as Someone Who Gives A Shit About Things.²³

Angela Carini, White Tears, and the one mod system (August 3-10, 2024)

This notion was also vindicated in an unfortunate manner on August 3, after Renkon made a number of posts about Italian boxer Angela Carini's white tears, her position as a cop, and the far right's support of her transphobia toward Algerian boxer Imane Khelif. Although Renkon was quite specific in these posts, they were immediately confronted by a fragile anonymous ask which seriously attempted to argue Carini was neither a cop nor a white person. (Both assertions are false and frankly ridiculous as far as I could find.) The anonymous ask in kind was followed by user @nyktv, who took exception to Renkon's statement that "white women and queer ppl will always dismiss accusations of racism!! Always!" and demanded Renkon not make such "sweeping generalizations."

This was once again exasperating for Renkon, who blocked @nyktv and explained:

If you are white and you are queer and your first impulse when reading this post is to think "hey I'M not like that, \#NotAllWhiteQueers," rather than jumping in my notifications, I implore you to instead explain this to your fellow white queers who rather demonstrably do not get it.²⁴

Likewise, other users such as @naidje (Naidje), @virtualmarmalade, and @shel (Shel) made posts pushing back on or outright calling out this type of behavior. But the situation continued to escalate anyways: @nyktv ultimately changed her username and profile picture, falsely accused other users of transphobia (which Renkon continued to have to see because of how blocking is not retroactive), and decried the site as a "hyperdesperate gaggle of elitist judgemental couch activist larping clout chasers." Both usernames are now a 404 so it seems she either deleted her account or simply changed the name/swapped to another page to go incognito.

Renkon ultimately concluded in a series of posts that:

I need to log off but this situation has left me genuinely shaking. White people weaponizing their tears are so fucking violent, and it is terrifying how they don't even seem to think much of it. [...] The violence of heaping racist shit in my notifications and expecting me not to start posting screenshots after telling you repeatedly to stop. The violence of throwing your hands up in the air and going "okay you caught me I am in a meltdown" which is not EVER, NEVER, EVER a thing that POC are allowed to do lest they get brigaded to hell and back for not speaking with a cool and level head at all times. The fuckin, VIOLENCE, of letting the accusation of misgendering hang in the air, knowing full FUCKING well the kind of hell that would bring down on a queer non-white person's health and safety \#onhere. I am fuckin MAD lmao. Here's MY meltdown. White people, COLLECT YOUR TRASH²⁵

This served as the end to one matter, but the beginning of another. In the replies to one of Renkon's posts, a discussion between Mae and another user turned to the matter of Hong Kong. This brought Usernamenotrequired back into the fray, who swiftly denounced said user as "openly admitting you pal around with fascists." Renkon noticed this on August 7, 2024 (but seemingly was not familiar with the account), denounced their post and was once again exasperated by a white user speaking on such issues, and then seemingly blocked the user without thinking much more of it.

Two days later on August 9, 2024, I noticed the account and Renkon's post—and remembering my own very negative interactions with the account (and @zlchxo's revealing of the account owner as white) began to question how the account was not banned. I was, over the course of the next day or so, inundated with negative stories about the account; experiences that led people to block the account; affirmations that the account should be banned; and receipts that they had—as noted previously—been reported for their conduct during the February discussions of race on the site.

Surprised by the totality of issues with the account but their continued presence on the site, I made a third post expressing my feeling that the situation was [...]reading more and more like the racism/phrenology posts where action intentionally was not/has not been taken, rather than a case where this person has just slipped under the radar." Evidently this series of posts (and the widespread community affirmation that the account was a negative presence) was sufficient to finally have the account banned. But the experience galvanized many people—and especially visible minorities—into loudly expressing issues with the site, from a lack of visibility given to minority issues, to questions of the structural sustainability of one full-time moderator, to the utility (or lack thereof) of blocking. Others emphasized that the issue was one of reports not being answered appropriately, and that moderation practices needed to change.

Of course for other—white—users, the whole discussion served as "gay internet drama" that was everyone making a big deal about nothing and worthy of being dismissed with (now deleted) dissertations. For once these dismissive and insulting comments were dealt with in a timely (and actively impressive) fashion. But for at least two users that I am aware of even the sentiment was a last straw of Cohost's whiteness problem that saw them exit the website or commit to doing so.

An Epilogue, of sorts (August 10-)

On August 10, 2024 Cohost notified users of A brief update to moderation policies. In an effort to restore trust in the website's report feature and to address the longstanding concerns that prompted this document to be written, more transparency in reporting and how reports are handled is forthcoming. More importantly, the website implemented what it calls the "broken stair policy (aka "get the hell off my website, asshole")"—which they summarize in short as meaning:

If you are frequently reported for or found to be shitstirring, getting into arguments, or otherwise being routinely unpleasant to others, we will ban you from the website. we don't need assholes on the website.

These changes have been met with cautious optimism from some, but pessimism or outright cynicism from others. In my observation the remaining visible minority community is about 50/50 in terms of split between these camps.

Certainly I think it's difficult to fault the cynical; the consistent pattern here has simply been one of "not good enough." Most of the failures here seem to not be on the userbase for failing to report things (even as visible minorities openly lose faith in the report system), but on Cohost itself for failing to act on these reports in a timely or proper fashion.²⁶ A variety of white and nonwhite users alike have also speculated that the workload assigned to the site's one full-time mod is too high; or that only one full-time mod means staff may be insufficiently diverse to address the nuances of certain situations. I think that these are reasonable assumptions (although Kara's recent words on the lack of a backlog do complicate the first prior). But even more simply: it is hard to see why cynics should grant the charitability and good faith that Kara once asked for. In too many cases, the outcomes simply have not been as promised—too many times has community backlash seemingly been needed to get any result. It's not that Cohost sometimes gets it wrong, it's that it consistently does so and often has to be hectored into even reconsidering that wrongness. Fool me once applies heavily, in other words.

For the more optimistic, I think that charitability/good faith still exists in some form: we acknowledge it is a small team, and that while many visible minorities are on the precipice, not all is lost. The moderation is still receptive; the demographics are still at least theoretically favorable. For all its faults, Cohost is also still far and away more visible minority friendly than Twitter, Bluesky, much of the Fediverse, etc. But I think it is also true that we agree with the cynics in a few places. Far too often it seems like the only recourse is to make a big fuss—not to go through the official channels—and if the website is to get better then it must fix this aggressively. It also remains to be seen if the one mod system is a tenable one.

Ultimately what the future holds is anyone's guess. The remaining visible minority community is precarious indeed, and as mentioned some have already fled or are clearly withdrawing from the site. Several users have flipped between staying or leaving. Others still make their home here, however pessimistically; and some precious few are still true believers. Whether there is an eventual exodus of posters—or whether there is a second revitalization of visible minority posting—seems largely out of the hands of users. But this is assuredly not the last time race will be of significance on Cohost.

notes

¹ The only data I know like this is a Google Form done by @alloyed—and its self-selecting sample finds exactly 80.6% white.

² The author of this piece found this to be an issue with Tildes, for example, and cofounded a website similar to Tildes to address perceived issues of this sort.

³ Getting anonymous asks and Discord friend requests..., June 19, 2024 (archive)

⁴ One of these people from the “freespeechextremist” instance just tried following me on cohost..., May 10, 2023

⁵ This is the response I got from Kara just now, this is… not great in my opinion..., May 13, 2023 (archive)

⁶ Ibid - Yes, we're doing this.

⁷ After some internal discussion we decided to take action and remove the user...., May 13, 2023

⁸ a brief note on good faith, May 13, 2023

⁹ It appears this post has been subsequently deleted. The post is quoted as having said "Sorry if it seemed like I was acting in bad faith or something."

¹⁰ I fully agree. I saw the original posts (which at the time had very few comments other than "wow that sucks") and reported that user...., May 14, 2023 (archive)

¹¹ why didn't you just report the horrible asks and replies you were getting, June 26, 2024 (archived by screenshot)

¹² Hey Renkon,, July 13, 2024 (archive)

¹³ This argument might be best summarized as "Cohost's current audience largely remains its founding audience because more 'normal' interests are largely absent from the website, while niche/injoke-y interests that its founding audience enjoy constitute the majority of posts."

¹⁴ Whiteness and homogeneity, February 9, 2024 (archive)

¹⁵ i only have two things to add to current discourses. one serious and one funny., February 9, 2024 (archive)

¹⁶ Users—both white and non-white—have variously related their initial blocking of the account for its bad vibes, for its lashing out against users, for its apologia and support of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, for its general support of authoritarian capitalist regimes that happen to be oppositional to America, and it calling residents of Hong Kong fascists for opposing China's efforts to end the one-country-two-systems policy. This is not an exhaustive list.

¹⁷ The infantilization/fetishization part of Orientalism is very important and I've written about it before..., June 16, 2024 (archive)

¹⁸ The author of this post subsequently acknowledged it as "careless and badly written" and apologized to Renkon, which was accepted. I've opted to not link it accordingly.

¹⁹ A thing that has happened to just about every East/SE Asian diaspora person/immigrant I know, June 21, 2024 (archive)

²⁰ I know it's been said a bunch but, June 19, 2024

²¹ Note that reporting is only easily done if the ask is never published. You seem to have to report the post they're in if you opt to publish an ask and then want to report it.

²² So named for the eponymous yinglet fictional species and characterized most prominently by its substitution of ⟨ z ⟩ for ⟨ th ⟩ (so "zhat zhing" for "that thing"). A significant number of Cohost users are yinglet therians who type as a yinglet would actually talk.

²³ Anyway if you were wondering if I regret talking about Orientalism etc on cohost, the answer is still yes (archive)

²⁴ I am tired, August 5, 2024

²⁵ See, this is where white supremacists give the game away..., August 5, 2024 (archive); The violence of heaping racist shit in my notifications..., August 5, 2024 (archive)

²⁶ There are likely dozens of examples of this which I could have covered but did not. Throughout the entire process of research and clearing this post with community members, I was alerted to report after report that resulted in no (apparent) action—even when the offense was clear.