Goodbye, cohost

Tuesday, September 10, 2024

On Monday, cohost staff announced that their platform would be shutting down at the end of 2024.

For those unfamiliar, cohost was a social media platform founded in 2022 with the intention of avoiding the pitfalls faced by the likes of Twitter, Tumblr and Reddit. It marketed itself as explicitly anti-“algorithm” and promised not to rely on ads or datamining for its business.

I have taken an interest in cohost since I first learned about it about a year ago, but I never actually used the platform, particularly due to concerns about the platform’s viability.

Many online social media platforms, such as most Mastodon instances, only exist thanks to the generosity of volunteers. While donations can cover some operating expenses, it is often not enough, as cohost demonstrated with its $25,000 deficit.

Subscription-based web services are a great alternative to “free” websites that treat their users as the product. When users are a service’s main source of revenue, it ensures that their interests are prioritized.

This concern is not unique to social media.

Google search has gotten worse over the years because it dominates the market and doesn’t make money directly from users. Now Kagi, a “premium search engine,” offers a subscription-based, ad-free search that claims to put the users first, and it appears to be doing very well.

As we continue to see free online commercial services succumb to enshittification, I hope to see wider adoption of services whose economic interests align with the people they serve, rather than advertisers and dataminers. But this is only possible when users like you and me demand it.