Do you consider Lemmy/Reddit (and similar platforms) to be social media?

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.

Dudewitbow,

yes, but the key difference is how its. typically used. reddit/lemmy is generally following specific topics while other forms of social media tend to follow specific people or organizations

so yes, both imo are forms of social media, but brcause of how you interact more with it is different, it feels like it’s not the same.

Anticorp,

No

fishos,
@fishos@lemmy.world avatar

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?

TheOctonaut,

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.

fishos,
@fishos@lemmy.world avatar

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.

TheOctonaut,

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.

fishos, (edited )
@fishos@lemmy.world avatar

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.

TheOctonaut,

Again, it’s not about links or about comments. It’s about the focus of the content. My friend, I have been shitposting on the Internet quite likely longer than you’ve been alive, so no, I’m not ignoring the content. And I was on Facebook for the best part of a decade so no, no shame there either.

But Usenet isn’t social media. Forums aren’t social media. Comment boxes aren’t social media. The term came about when people started friending and following and tagging each other and generally caring who the other person is - without which all of these previous examoles are just more chatrooms and forums. If Social Media is literally just communicating in any way on the Internet, then the term is useless.

Kolanaki,
@Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

It’s media where you interact with other people. So yeah.

1984,
@1984@lemmy.today avatar

I wouldn’t want to associate this place with the garbage social media pits like Facebook and Instagram…

I liked the idea of calling it antisocial media, because it really is about building the opposite of what Facebook and Instagram is about.

Excrubulent,
@Excrubulent@slrpnk.net avatar

You could call them antisocial then. The problem with social media isn’t the social part, it’s that the media part is controlled by a single entity.

glimse,

The problems with social media absolutely include the social part and I’d even go as far as saying it’s the biggest problem with it.

People post on social media like they’re talking privately to their friends…whole lot of opinions they wouldn’t dare say within punching distance of a stranger. And because it’s to such a broad audience, they will find other people who will share the same awful opinions and feel validated, further entrenching their beliefs. It also encourages exaggerating or outright lying for attention.

Not to take away from the harm of data collection and targeted marketing, of course, but social media has a people problem. And to quote MIB, “A person is smart. People are dumb.”

Excrubulent,
@Excrubulent@slrpnk.net avatar

This idea that anonymity breeds toxicity seems to be a piece of received wisdom that people just assume, but I would honestly love to know if there’s any real information to back it up.

glimse,

I didn’t know of any studies claiming either way but what I was referring to happens on sites like Facebook, too

Excrubulent,
@Excrubulent@slrpnk.net avatar

Oh you mean how echo chambers get created. Yeah, that’s almost entirely down to Facebook’s scummy algorithms, not an inherent feature of people. Facebook had tools to prevent the spread of hate on their platform and noticed they reduced revenue so they turned them off. This is entirely down to that platform being controlled by a single entity with no regard for the people who use it.

HobbitFoot,

So, I think forums are a form of social media, so trying to say this is a forum and not social media isn’t a good argument for me.

Gigan,
@Gigan@lemmy.world avatar

I personally don’t, because it’s anonymous.

pb42184,

I don’t consider them social media.

Virtually nothing on it is about the poster, and that’s mostly how I see social media. Even more baffling is people calling YouTube social media.

Two important caveats though.

  1. maybe r/JohnQSmith type things are prevalent just not in my experience. There’s plenty of content I’ve never seen.
  2. The descriptivists won the day, so language is about what people do say not what people should say. If people call it that and the dictionary or whatever says something different, the speakers aren’t wrong. The dictionary is wrong.
paddirn, (edited )

I agree that there is a difference in how sites like Facebook and Twitter operate vs Reddit and Lemmy, BUT I think they’re still both social media. One tends to emphasize personality and individuals more. You’re encouraged to Follow/Like/Subscribe to the people or accounts themselves. People are given big avatar images and/or profile pages, you can see who they’re following. The topics themselves aren’t as important, it’s more about, “What will Taylor Swift or Elon Musk say today?”. Individuals are given much more attention.

Contrast that with Reddit/Lemmy/forums, where people are more or less reduced to a name, less-emphasized avatars and minimal profile pages. The topics themselves are emphasized and typically communities as a whole come together and do things as a group (meme wars and whathaveyou). The individual is less important and the communities/subreddits are more the “stars” of these sites. You’re encouraged more to Upvote/Downvote/Comment, so you’re interacting a little different, but it mostly just amounts to different terminology. I’ll admit though, the only person I’ve ever considered following on forum sites is u/Shittymorph. Just because his posts were so goddamn hilarious, but finding them in the wild was what made them so epic, reading all the way through only to discover…. “Goddamnit!”

I think in both cases they’re still “social media”, but they are definitely in different categories and they emphasize different parts of the experience.

FaizalR,
FaizalR avatar

It's more to a content aggregator.

fuckwit_mcbumcrumble,

If you’re interacting with other users then there’s 0 question it’s social media.

GregorGizeh,

By that logic every comment section under a random newspaper’s article is social media. I dont think this forum esque, link feed with comment sections kind of social media that lemmy is, qualifies. Reddit didnt either for the longest time, before they started trying to form a culture and drowned in self referencing humor and repetitive one liner comments.

Usernameblankface,
@Usernameblankface@lemmy.world avatar

Yes, that is also social media. Being terrible, bottom of the barrel social media doesn’t make it less social media. It’s still people gathering in a place discussing topics. A fleeting place discussing news articles, but still.

fuckwit_mcbumcrumble,

Comments sections on news articles are usually an afterthought to try to boost “engagement” and be a “me too”. Comments on Lemmy are a deliberate and integral part of it. Lemmy as just a link aggregator wouldn’t attract any users, the comments section are what keep people here and interacting with others.

Dagwood222,

I’ve seen people get into week long threads in the comments section of ‘GoComics’

fart_pickle,

To me Reddit like platforms are glorified forums. And I don’t mean it as an insult.

parpol,

It is a forum. A BBS.

TrickDacy,

I don’t really think it matters to have some context-free definition. It certainly is very much like social media in a lot of ways, and even you seem to acknowledge that. Unless your friend is trying to compare reddit like apps to Facebook in ways it isn’t like Facebook, how you label them doesn’t matter.

Today,

Absolutely social media. On Facebook i mostly followed groups - cannabis, gardening, work related interests, local news, etc. Same as here.

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