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An Immodest Proposal: KoSocial (With Poll) [1]

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Date: 2022-11-26

I'm not married to it.

Mama, I’ve left Twitter. I ain’t-a goin’ back.

I don’t need to sizzle your ear-hairs with the hot Nazi mess Elon’s Musked up; you know. And, like me, you’ve been looking around for alternatives.

You’ve been taking a master class in Mastodon, or printing out a Post precis. It’s entirely possible that the Twitter diaspora will amply populate these and/or other platforms and they will blossom into lively replacements for the formerly imperfect and now straight-up toxic playground where we once so merrily tweeted. But it’s a big bet that a community will simply coalesce around a new platform.



The fact is, I’ve been frequenting DKos since 2004. That’s going on two decades of interacting with a community I trust. That’s gold, and in Internet time it’s practically a millennium.

Why can’t DKos develop its own messaging platform that’s structured like Twitter? I’m a writer, not a software engineer (dammit, Jim), but my understanding is that the basic architecture is not terribly complex. I’d wager there are several regular Kossacks who can speak to that; perhaps they’ll dash my vision to pieces in the comment thread before it’s even fully articulated, but here goes.

Let’s say, for the moment, that the technical hurdles and the rest of the how of it are surmountable. Why would we want to do this? Why not let Mastodon be Kossacks’ post-twit stomping grounds?

Again, I’d say that building the platform from the community rather than the reverse makes it a significant contender right out of the gate. I trust, confide in and have meaningful, sometimes contentious (but never toxic) exchanges with the users of this community. Also: The troll-rating resources baked into DKos’ structure would be massively useful in insulating it from the predations of Trumpo-fascist incels and Putinbots.

Within a messaging platform structured somewhat like Twitter that community, would, I feel confident, naturally form into subgroups that could (a) sound off briefly on the news of the moment; (b) drill down into the subjects they cared most about; (c) team up on projects like political and cultural campaigns; (d) plan real-life events; and (e) stuff I haven’t even imagined. The key is the ability to friend/follow each other and build our affinity groups.

I don’t think DKos in its present, diary-based incarnation, good as that is, can be that refuge. But as an extension of it, this new thing (I like “KoSocial,” but whatever) could be.





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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/11/26/2138501/-An-Immodest-Proposal-KoSocial-With-Poll

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