this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2023
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So what's the consensus here? Does social media not include things where people use usernames, or do Reddit and maybe even Lemmy count?
Reddit and Lemmy are definitely social media. A subreddit or Lemmy community is effectively the same idea as a Facebook group, just with pseudonyms.
The quantifiably different thing about lemmy is nobody is trying to trap you in a skinner box.
I mean it kind of ends up being a Skinner box anyway just because of the loop of scrolling, seeing a post, looking at it and repeating. But I agree nobody is actively trying to trap you in one.
Social media has always excluded forum like sites. It most definitely does not include anonymous sites. Social media has a strict definition about having connections to people, none of which Reddit nor lemmy has. Reddit technically added followers, but you cannot see nor interact with them, that’s not social media, that’s an email list. If lemmy is social media then so is every single comment section on every news site ever.
So are you saying that Facebook Groups aren't social media either? That's a forum like site. Tumblr isn't social media either?
This is Merriam-Webster's definition of social media:
This is Cambridge's:
Lemmy and Reddit both fall under these definitions.
Not sure what you mean by this... Reddit has had chats and PMs for a long time.
Neither Lemmy nor Reddit are anonymous. They're pseudonymous. Something like 4chan where you don't even need an account is anonymous.
Correct, facebook groups is not facebook. It's forum software hosted at the same url as facebook. Same as Facebook Marketplace. Marketplace is not facebook. It's craigslist. It just happens to be hosted at the same url as facebook. Just like StackOverflow Chat is not question and answer software even though it's literally hosted at the same url. Just like your phone is not social media even though you both create communities on it and communicate with people on it. If you don't understand how servers work behind the scenes then maybe that doesn't make a lot of sense to you, but a url is nothing more than a sign to put on the front of your building. You can then teleport the user to anywhere else in the universe and it can have absolutely nothing to do with the original location at all. This is the framework of the internet.
literally every single website on the entire planet meet those definitions.
You cannot interact with your followers. I didn't say anything about communicating with individuals that you see around the site. You have no way to know who your followers are you have no way to message your followers. You have no way to interact with your followers. Reddit is a forum software, exactly like every forum software before it.
accounts have nothing to do with anonymity, maybe you're using some layperson's version of anonymity, but anonymous means it does not require real information. reddit and lemmy are anonymous.
Complain to the dictionaries about it, then :) for now I'm sticking with the dictionary definitions.
Every post you make on Reddit or Lemmy is tied to your username. There's only one snowe@programming.dev and every post under that username is made by you. That's why it's pseudonomous, not anonymous - it forms an identity for you.
An anonymous system would have no way to tell that your posts are by the same person. See something like 4chan. You could post a comment or thread under the name "snowe", but it's anonymous because anyone can do that. There's no way to connect your posts together.
I should have said with the exception of Lemmy. Not sure I'm getting enough value to continue using it either honestly.
I view the term "social media" as a continuum and not a box. There are degrees of "social media" with the extreme being sites built around using people's "real-life" identities.
Well, social media has a definition. It is any media that allows you to be social. No matter if it is anonymous or not.
i am afraid that consensus among general population increasingly is "words mean exactly what you want them to mean at any given moment". welcome to post-factual age.
Nah, language has always been in flux. We're not going to become babbling morons any time soon. I mean, we even have writing now so we can save up a definition to adopt or reject later; that's fairly new in human history.
What is a bit different is that we have to talk about a lot of things that didn't exist a generation ago, but that's only a matter of quantity. Every branch of the Indo-European language family adopted it's own term for iron when it arrived, for example, so I'm sure we'll settle on some sort of consistent English terminology for different kinds of platforms. We're just not there yet, as the replies I got show.
yeah, no.
the person who wrote "look at me, i am so cool, i am not using social networks" on a social network didn't do that because they would be confused by new technology that didn't exist generation ago, they did that because it worked for narrative they tried to present. and unfortunately it is more and more common and it is not a problem related to technology, just look at any political discussion.
so while what you said is true, it is not very relevant to the discussed problem.
Social media has always excluded forum like sites. It most definitely does not include anonymous sites. Social media has a strict definition about having connections to people, none of which Reddit nor lemmy has. Reddit technically added followers, but you cannot see nor interact with them, that’s not social media, that’s an email list. If lemmy is social media then so are every single comment section on every news site ever.
social media has never excluded anything. it wouldn't even be possible, and that is because there is no supreme authority that could issue some strict definition that would be legally binding for everyone 😆
social media didn't come about until after the advent of facebook so yes, by definition it excludes anything before then. Forum software existed for decades at that point. At no point in time has forum software ever been included in anyone's social media definition, except it seems like you.
of course, sweetie. and just out of curiosity, what strict definition from some respectable authority other than you are you working with? 😂
social media, n. Websites and applications which enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking.
social media, noun : forms of electronic communication (such as websites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (such as videos)
long story short, social media is more than facebook.
yes, they did. decades before facebook. you just said that. what you probably wanted to say is that the term didn't come out until... well here is the news for you. the term usually comes after the phenomenon it is describing, not the other way around. it doesn't work like "hey guys, i have cool term - social media - now we just have to invent some" 🤣
nice projection there. have fun.