Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

(Semi-obligatory thanks to @dgerard for starting this)

  • rook@awful.systemsEnglish
    10·
    3 months ago

    Cohost going readonly at the end of this month, and shutting down at the end of the year: https://cohost.org/staff/post/7611443-cohost-to-shut-down

    Their radical idea of building a social network that did not require a either VC funding or large amounts of volunteer labour has come to a disappointing, if not entirely surprising end. Going in without a great idea on how to monetise the thing was probably not the best strategy as it turns out.

    • corbin@awful.systemsEnglish
      12·
      3 months ago

      To be clear: Cohost did take funding from an anonymous angel, and as a result will not be sharing their source code; quoting from your link:

      Majority control of the cohost source code will be transferred to the person who funded the majority of our operations, as per the terms of the funding documents we signed with them; Colin and I will retain small stakes so we have some input on what happens to it, at their request.

      We are unable to make cohost open source. the source code for cohost was the collateral used for the loan from our funder.

      Somebody paid a very small amount of money to get a cleanroom implementation of Tumblr and did not mind that they would have to build a community and then burn it to the ground in the process. It turns out that angels are not better people than VCs.

      • rook@awful.systemsEnglish
        7·
        3 months ago

        Looking at both cohost and tumblr, I don’t think the funder has an asset that’s worth very much.

        • gerikson@awful.systemsEnglish
          9·
          3 months ago

          Yeah, having the source to a site (even if it includes stuff like day to day ops, backups etc) isn’t worth much if you don’t have a community. It’s a bit like “open source” LLMs, sure you can run a mudball of python on your computer but the real worth is in ingesting and classifying.

    • ebu@awful.systemsEnglish
      9·
      3 months ago

      i used (and use, until the shutdown) cohost as my primary social media site. i’m not surprised, but i can’t say it hasn’t been disappointing. for all the issues it has (and it did have a lot) it was pretty much the only site that felt somewhat cozy to use for me. stings quite a bit

        • David Gerard@awful.systemsMEnglish
          7·
          3 months ago

          A small Lemmy or Mastodon that’s run by some guy and takes donations for hosting has a better grasp of funding than Cohost did

          • blakestacey@awful.systemsEnglish
            7·
            3 months ago

            (smashes imaginary intercom button) “Who is this ‘some guy’? Find him and find out what he knows!!”

    • BlueMonday1984@awful.systemsEnglish
      7·
      3 months ago

      Their radical idea of building a social network that did not require a either VC funding or large amounts of volunteer labour has come to a disappointing, if not entirely surprising end. Going in without a great idea on how to monetise the thing was probably not the best strategy as it turns out.

      I never used Cohost, but I know a couple people who do and fuuuuuuuck this sucks. 'Least Newgrounds is still going, though that’s a bit of an apples-to-oranges comparison.