I had this discussion with a friend, and we really couldn’t reach a consensus.
My friend thinks Lemmy (and other Reddit-like platforms) is social media because you’re interacting with other people, liking/disliking submissions, and all the content is user-generated.
I think it isn’t because you’re not following individual people, just communities/topics. Though I concede there are some aspects of social media present, I feel that overall it’s not because my view of social media is that you’re primarily following individuals.
In my view, these link aggregator + comment platforms are more like an evolution of forums which both my friend and I agreed don’t meet the criteria to be considered social media (though they maintain that Reddit-like platforms are social media while I do not).
So I’m asking Lemmy now to weigh in to help settle this friendly debate.
Edit: Thanks everyone! From the comments, it sounds like my friend and I are both right and both wrong. lol. Feel free to keep chiming in, but I have to go do the 9-5 thing that pays my mortgage and cloud hosting bills.
I think you’re both right. It’s really a semantic argument over what ‘social’ means in the phrase ’social network’.
For me I tend to agree with your interpretation. I suspect it’s because the phrase came into popular use(see Google Trend screenshot below) and in reference to the Xengas, MySpaces, and Facebooks of the world that were user-centric rather than the forums and BBS type paradigms that were more topic centric.
If it is like writing on toilet walls,
then it is social media.I prefer to think of them as antisocial media.
You’re literally asking a question for other people to answer. How is that any less social media than Twitter or Facebook? People post their personal achievements all the time, etc. If you respond to me, are we not having a social interaction?
How is it not social media?
Because by that criteria every web page that’s ever had a comment box is “social media”.
Social media to me is, as the guy said, defined by the fact that you’re following a person/persona, not a topic.
This site and other sites like it are link aggregators. If you wanted to, you could use and contribute to a link aggregator without ever writing or indeed reading a comment.
Then what about the self help communities? They largely share stories and personal experiences.
Or the meme communities largely made up of 2 heavy posters that other people follow?
Acting like Lemmy is only a link aggregator is being obtuse.
They share them as a once off. Very occasionally you’ll get the “Update: MIL stole our baby” posts, but mostly it doesn’t matter (and shouldn’t matter) who is posting the content. In social media, who is posting matters.
You have the oddities on Reddit occasion like that terrible poet and the comic lady that has her OF simps brigade her posts, but just look at how utterly useless and rejected all of Reddit’s attempts to turn it into social media are: follows, journals, chat - features of genuine social media but done poorly and with the wrong audience who distinctly Don’t want to follow personalities.
You can’t just handwave away 90% of the content and claim that all these sites are really about the links.
For God’s sake, you’re citing reddit, a site renowned for people reading only the headline and then jumping into the comments to socially engage about the topic.
Or let’s point to “we did it reddit!”. That wasn’t a social collaboration? Or r/place? Or AMA?
Yeah, if you ignore all of the social interaction, reddit is a link aggregator. But if you really think reddit is equivalent to an RSS feed, you’re either being a troll or just oblivious.
Do you really think there’s an important distinction to be made or do you just not want to admit that you’re no different from the people who scroll Facebook all day? If it’s the latter, maybe it’s yourself you’re more upset with than the term.
