What social media platforms do you recommend?

cll7793@lemmy.world to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 31 points –

What social media platforms do you use and want to recommend to others? Front ends could also be a suggestion, along with lists of great communities.

For example: https://sub.rehab/

Which is a collection of communities from different platforms.

10

I recommend avoiding social media.

she says, on lemmy

Everyone of course interacts with different websites in their own way, but for me, personally, I do consider Lemmy (and reddit before I migrated) to be in a different category than Facebook/twitterx/Instagram, etc.

For me, sites like this are primarily link-aggregators. Interacting with other users is a secondary function. Not that I don't do it, I'm here now writing this comment after all, but I'm not here to follow any users in particular. I have no investment in anyones life here, I'm just memeing with a bunch of anonymous strangers. It's basically the online equivalent of talking about the weather with strangers at a bus stop. Sure it's technically social, but I'm not really developing any kind of relationship with anyone here.

I don't consider forum sites to be "social media" in the same sense as, say, Facebook or Tw๐•ฉtter.

To me, "social media" has to do with the structure of how you're presented things to read or look at: specifically, that this happens according to social connections โ€” connections between one person and another.

On a "social media" service like Facebook or Tw๐•ฉtter, you see messages based on your "friend" or "follower" connections to other people. When you post, it's your "friends" or "followers" who see your message โ€” people who have told the site they want to hear from you as a person.

On a "forum" service like Reddit or Lemmy, you see messages based on what topical forums you have chosen to subscribe to. When you post, you put your message into a specific forum, and people who subscribe to that forum see your message.

These two structures lead to very different social dynamics.

Interesting distinction, thanks for sharing your thoughts. I guess I've been using "social media" to mean the same things we used to mean by "Web 2.0", platforms primarily populated with user-submitted content. But wikis aren't social media...