Some thoughts after using CounterSocial (CoSo) for 5 months or so

This is basically a somewhat rough review of the site emphasizing more my thoughts and impressions of the site. I joined the site in April 2022, and I paused using it this month, August 2022. 

When Elon Musk announced this year he was buying Twitter (a deal he is by now trying to get out of doing as employees of Twitter start to flee given the chaos), many Twitter users headed out the door, or at least threatened to do so. I decided at that time to look into alternatives just in case, To be honest, at the time I was not too serious about fully jumping ship. I was looking at options just in case. Also, as an academic librarian I have some interest in social media, so I am always open to trying new options and sites, or at least new to me. While I do strive to keep up, I am by no means an early adopter or such. I go at my own calm pace. 

I am not going to review the features of the site as that has been done elsewhere and probably better than I could. If you would like a summary of the site's features and some reviews with screenshots, etc., here are some reviews I found: 

 

• "Who Owns Counter Social?" by Mohit Oberoi at Market Realist. Review looks at the site and its owner, the pseudonymous hacktivist The Jester. 
• "The Notorious Hacker Who Is Trying To Fix Social Media" by Lucas Ropek at Gizmodo. This is a fairly sympathetic to The Jester article with review of the site. 
• The Jester has his own Wikipedia entry. As reviews point out, the hacker does sound and/or come across as quite conservative, which can be ironic given CoSo has become a sort of very liberal haven, or at least seems to cater to that crowd. He describes himself as a "patriot," which these days is one of the code words for a conservative of some kind. He claims not to support Donald Trump, but that does not mean he is liberal. Anyhow, I leave readers to decide what to make of The Jester.
   

Overall, if Truth Social, Trump's social media platform (link to its Wikipedia entry) is where a lot of Right Wingers, Trump supporters, and other conservative firebrands went, over time it seems CoSo is where the Left Wingers went, mainly the harder left wingers and liberals. On the surface, yes, the site can be a bit more polite and less toxic than Twitter. That initial feel is in part also to The Jester's restrictions on the site; it is not a free for all. There are certain sites and domains he blocks outright. However, after a while of using the site, I notice that it is like any other social media platform where you get some nice people and more than a few who are not so nice. The not so nice people tend to be passive aggressive, not so subtle, and often pedantic of the performative type, you know, the folks on the Internet who always have a need to correct others on every other real or more likely perceived offense or infraction. In CoSo, people are more likely to make impertinent comments on a post, make pedantic replies, or otherwise just make a nuisance of themselves until you block them. As I said, it can be a lot like other social media platforms. 

The site's bias leans very strong to the Left. These are not extreme socialists necessarily or such, but they definitely are left of the center, and they will make sure you know it. In addition, if you are a hard Democrat, you are likely to feel at home as many users show strong fealty to that party (at least the U.S. users; the site does draw users from around the world). You say something wrong about the party, and odds are you'll soon get comments trying to "correct" you. 

I soon found myself needing to use the block function. I use it on Twitter too, but I had to really put it to work practically as soon as I began doing some tentative posts. I still do not quite have the filtering right. I am not likely to get it right without working at it. The site, like Twitter, allows you to block/filter out keywords and terms as well as people. One drawback is that once you get a filter on, it stays on and it is hard to remove. On Twitter, I may see in my feed that a post is not shown because I filtered a word or such. I can turn off that filter on the spot to see what it was. CoSo does not allow that, so if I see "this post is filtered" I have no idea why nor can I use do a quick open to see. 

On a positive for some, you can do longer posts than you can on Twitter. 

The site, like many other social media platforms, can have cliques. Additionally, the site is not really that diverse. Part of it may be the kind of users they attract. Another part is that it is just not as big as Twitter, so there is not as much diversity of topics. Some topics, such as books and reading, are fairly scarce in CoSo. Some topics are just non-existent. This is an issue for any social media platform trying to get growth. Twitter certainly has the advantage there due to time and experience. CoSo just lacks the content diversity, and if you do not know a few folks to start it can feel isolating. You would be basically starting over, which I did not mind, but the lack of diversity can be an issue. Other than a lot of politics (left politics), a good amount of "geek stuff" (programming, coding, computers, and such), and some seriously preachy people there is not much else. People tend to be serious to the point of being humorless. Yes you can find some memes, but even those are not enough to get the humor flowing. 

As I wrote at the beginning, I have been on it since April 2022, so about 4 months by now. That was more than enough time for me to kick the tires, give a fair shake, and decide if I want to stay or not. I am leaning towards leaving. CoSo for me feels like I have to be self-censoring and/or avoid certain topics to avoid unwanted attention, or I just have to block obnoxious people fairly often. I already have Twitter fairly well calibrated, so I do not see too much of the toxicity that others often complain about on Twitter. I just don't feel the need to put in the work to calibrate CoSo. To be honest, at this point I would not miss CoSo (and I am sure no one over there would miss me). For all its flaws, I do have a sense of community on Twitter that I know is not going to develop on CoSo anytime soon. 

Would I recommend CoSo to others? Not really, but I would not dissuade anyone from trying it and deciding for themselves. I would say you may be better off setting up a Mastodon account (link to Wikipedia entry and link for the site and opening an account), find an instance of Mastodon you like, and go there instead. Mastodon can be a lot calmer for one. I also set up a Mastodon account (you can find me in the mas.to instance). I will write some thoughts on Mastodon down the road after I use it some more, but so far it is far preferable to CoSo.

The bottom line is that at this point I am no longer using CoSo nor logging in. Deactivating the account is a strong possibility for me, but for now I may just let it go derelict, that's how indifferent I am about it. It may have some good features, but it does not feel right nor worth the effort. I write this post as nothing more than a very average person. I am not a techie or such, so I am writing more as an average person who may hear of the site from the news and decided to try it out. I've tried it out. I was not impressed, but I leave it to my four readers to decide.