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.
I prefer to think of them as antisocial media.
If I have to concede this argument to my buddy, that's how I'm going to do it: antisocial media đ
This is due to the anonymity of the situation and is the same direction my own answer went. Iâm betting I know where this question came from, and Iâd also bet courts would lean the other direction, based on the intent.
ive had this argument going for at least a decade. I agree with you, it is not social media. i dont think forums are social media any more than usenet.
its why i calll my instance a 'nonsense aggregator', as your verbiage also alludes to.
that said, im using an mbin server.. and the microblog/twitverse piece does seem to jump into the social media arena. so my server product is now integrated with that category whether i like it or not.
I love the term "nonsense aggregator" xD
Usenet's also a good comparison, and yeah, not social media.
Definitely agree on K/Mbin straddling the line because of its microblogging feature.
I think that Lemmy and Reddit are 100% social media.
Common/Wiki definition:
Content aggregators aren't discluded. Especially in this case where original content can and does exist.
The biggest difference, I believe, as to why Lemmy is social media and a typical forum is not, is the sorting. In a forum, the discussion is chronological as in a conversation. Here, more likes gets you more noticed. In content AND in discussion. Thus there is incentive. Whether you care about likes or not, it exist and so does incentive for social relevancy. It drives what you see.
Next becomes use case. You CAN sort the comments chronologically, but nobody does that. You CAN just read and never post, but people also do that on Instagram. Maybe you don't care about likes and aren't trying to get them. But they exist, and other users do care. If I didn't care about Facebook likes, it's still social media.
Whether you like it or not, everything is socially manipulated on this site.
Maybe you don't feel the negative effects that are typically associated with social media, and that's great. But some people here do and can get angry/upset/defensive about being down voted. Either way, those effects are not a part of the definition, although the connotation does exist. And the same could be said about any social media. Some people are more headstrong and less effected. This site is not nearly as predatory as the big ones and (depending on your communities) don't always have the intent to drive your emotional response. But those communities and users do exist.
I only have Instagram installed because there's a few people who send me (usually political) clips so we can chat about them when we hang out or text. I'm not following anyone I know. I have added a few of the creators. I've never once liked or reposted anything. So can I now say Instagram isn't social media?
Perhaps subcategories could be created, but that's besides the point. This site absolutely fits at least that one definition, which removes all connotation and defensive argument that can be had.
OP is here interacting with a network of users sharing ideas that are being sorted by popularity, then viewing other posts sorted by popularity. This is socially driven media.
I think youâre both right. Itâs really a semantic argument over what âsocialâ means in the phrase âsocial networkâ.
For me I tend to agree with your interpretation. I suspect itâs 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.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_social_media
If it is like writing on toilet walls,
then it is social media.
That's an interesting and not inaccurate comparison lol.
If youâre interacting with other users then thereâs 0 question itâs social media.
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.
I've seen people get into week long threads in the comments section of 'GoComics'
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.
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.
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.
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.
I don't know anyone from Lemmy IRL. No one on here blows up my phone while I'm at work or trying to sleep. I'm not "following" anyone. I don't hate myself and everyone else every time I log on here. I'd say it is NOT social media
We are, somehow, socializing here. And here is a kind of media. So, yes, it is a social media.
YouTube is also a social media.
Social media is a generic concept and should not be limited to Facebook/Instagram-like platforms.
That's basically my friend's argument. And I can see your/their point.
My argument against it basically boils down to the scope of what you follow. Following a group/community vs individual users. e.g. If I posted this on a forum back in 1997, we'd be having this discussion in a similar manner (though probably not threaded).
That, and "social media" carries a kind of stigma from the engagement algorithms they all use. Granted, that's not a requirement for something to be technically social media, but it's definitely something most people associate with it.
Algorithms is a consequence. Most of social medias are profitable, so they want you to be engaged as much as possible. At the beginning of Facebook or even the late Orkut, they were only a simple platform with no algorithm that only shows stuff like a showcase.
But as soon as Facebook starts to make money showing ads, algorithms started to become a thing. But look, it was a social media already.
Also, was Orkut a social media? Cause it was really close from what Reddit/Lemmy is today.
About forums I think there is a subtle difference. Forums are, generally speaking, communities driven with on purpose only, inside another website. For example, we can enter Acer website and go to the forums, which is used to talk about Acer products and support. Any other topic is off-topic, therefore deleted.
When forums are aggregated into a huge platform that can have different communities, with easy to-go click and follow this community, there is no specific topic and you can join any type of content you want with only one account, I call it social media, cause it's different enough from forums and the main purpose is people interacting with each other
Many people here are being incredibly pedantic about the words "social media", forgetting entirely that "social media" is a term invented to describe a certain type of website. Forums existed before the term was being widely used, for example, and whilst they would fit a dictionary definition of the words within the term they were always considered a separate entity to what was established as being 'social media' (e.g.: Myspace, Bebo, Facebook, etc.).
I'm with you, OP.
This. Maybe I'm getting old but I really get frustrated when people start calling everything social media. In particular, I keep hearing people group YouTube and communicators like Discord or even freaking WhatsApp under this label.
Yes. I also consider forums to be social media, but the good kind.
Op you can follow Reddit and Lemmy users just the same as on Facebook or Twitter. So by your own definition, Reddit and Lemmy are forms of social media.
To me they are social media.
You can also follow topics/communities on other platforms, and on Reddit you can follow people/accounts.
There's not much difference.
Yeah it's more like a sliding scale where some platforms are deeply about following people, and some about topics, but I'm the end it's all social media.
I think one aspect OP didn't talk about is anonymity, for me the biggest differentiator is that on lemmy/Reddit you have no idea who the accounts are most of the time (and more importantly, nobody knows who you are).
I think they're antisocial media. Reddit more than lemmy, though, which feels a bit like a community sometimes.
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.
maybe r/JohnQSmith type things are prevalent just not in my experience. There's plenty of content I've never seen.
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.
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.
I donât know what else youâd call it.
pee pee poo poo media
It's media where you interact with other people. So yeah.
Yes, they just don't do the whole personal algorithm thing.
I don't think they are, they're more akin to forums.
In my mind, social media is where you follow people and people broadcast their lives. That's the social aspect of it.
With Reddit and Lemmy we follow communities on topics we're interested in.
I do get the arguments for it to be social media but that just makes the category way too broad, as you could argue any site with a comment section is social media.
I disagree with that. If the main purpose of your site is not interaction, so it cannot be a social media. Lemmy, Reddit, Kbin and other platforms like that has the main purpose share of knowledge and interaction between peers
For example, I may have a blog and this blog has a comment section in my posts. However, despite people can interact with each other in the comment section, the main purpose of my blog is post my own content. The interaction between people is secondary and consequence.
But in Lemmy the main purpose is interact. If not enough people participate, Lemmy dies. There is no other reason to use Lemmy other than interact with people.
Which I would, tbh, although it's a limited form of SM, since sharing of top level content is very restricted to those with control of the site.
It's in the same class IMO as sites which are more open, like Lemmy/Reddit/FB/Twitter - they are perhaps more focused on SM as a primary function, while comment sections are a secondary aspect of, say, a news site. But the presence of shared discussion of whatever topic is at the top makes them SM for me.
To me Reddit like platforms are glorified forums. And I don't mean it as an insult.
It's more to a content aggregator.
I think it's possible to use it like social media and a few people do. One obvious/dumb example would be Lord Douchewad himself: spez.
However, IMHO 99.9999% of people who use it anonymously are social media adjacent, but not on social media.
I can see good arguments to the contrary. Semantics.
Yeah, I agree it's likely just a matter of semantics.
Lol, what started this discussion was that I said I didn't use any social media and my buddy was like, "What? You're on Lemmy all the time".
I get that same gotcha from people, too. Even if they are technically correct, they should be a good friend and acknowledge what you really meant. Flexing on Facebook or LinkedIn or whatever is very different from shitposting on here or reddit.
It's just awkward and unnecessary to have to say "verified user social media versus anonymous social media" when we can lump Meta, X, and Microsoft under Social Media as a blanket term.
I guess the blanket term for reddit and Lemmy and 4chan type sites could be "meme sites" or "link sharing sites" or whatever.
We need a cool new term for it, one that is easy to say and memorable. Fediverse is pretty cool, but only applies to a subset of those.
Someone else in this thread used the term "nonsense aggregator" and I think that's my new favorite word for it.
I love it!
I believe it's in the same family of web environment as social media, but not necessarily the same clade of it.
Like comparing different romance languages.
IMO Lemmy is a social media, it allows people to socialize over shared interests. It doesn't need to facilitate IRL connections, even though they are likely to happen.
I personally don't, because it's anonymous.
I would say yes, it's a form of social media. An online place where, media and ideas can be shared by anyone (subject to membership requirements if any), and where there's a built-in way for the public to discuss and rate those shared items.
Primarily anonymous forum style communication are social media like bicycles, scooters, and skateboards are vehicles.
Technically yes, but not really what people think about when they talk about vehicles.
Yeah.
No, not at all. I don't consider forums social media. Something like Kbin might fall into the social media category though.
My thoughts is that I come here for content, not people, so there's no social aspect to it.
So yes i do think it is social media. But they are more akin to the old internet, or Facebook before it got massive and bad.
For exampke? There is not a massive algorithm, especially a personalized algorithm (obviously Top and Hot are technically algorithms, but they democratically place popular posts to anyone who hasn't blocked/is following the community).
For many comparisons they are obviously social media, but for other types of comparisons I don't think it's a great match.
"social media" is the rebranded name for what they used to call "Web 2.0", which refers to websites where the content both comes from users and is associated with user accounts.
Both reddit and lemmy clearly fit the bill just as much as livejournal and blogger do.
I've never seen Reddit as social media, more like a forum. Though I felt it was getting more like social media in recent years. But in one discussion such as this is was pointed out that forums pretty much are social media, they just existed before the term existed.
Then it dawned on me. Reddit didn't become more like social media - it always was one. It was just the enshitification that made it more like the other social media that I was noticing.
Lemmy is medium through which we are having social interactions. So yeah.
I agree that there is a difference in how sites like Facebook and Twitter operate vs Reddit and Lemmy, BUT I think theyâre still both social media. One tends to emphasize personality and individuals more. Youâre 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 theyâre following. The topics themselves arenât as important, itâs more about, âWhat will Taylor Swift or Elon Musk say today?â. 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 âstarsâ of these sites. Youâre encouraged more to Upvote/Downvote/Comment, so youâre interacting a little different, but it mostly just amounts to different terminology. Iâll admit though, the only person Iâve 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 discoverâŚ. âGoddamnit!â
I think in both cases theyâre still âsocial mediaâ, but they are definitely in different categories and they emphasize different parts of the experience.
It's social media and how social media can be a useful utility without preying on its user base by selling info or advertising shoddy products or whatever.
The term social media is descriptive of an interactive web client like a chat forum. It's not necessarily bad the way propaganda is not necessarily false or malicious.
I think it's a massive forum.
I think of social media as Facebook where it's your real name and contacts who you interact with (primarily anyway).
But this is any number of topics you can go in and out of, with a huge array of strangers that you may or may not interact with again. More links, discussion, specialities.
You can get into precise definitions to force Lemmy/Reddit into social media, but I'm still forum.
Aren't forums technically social media as well?
Not exactly. Lemmy (like Reddit) is a social news/link aggregator. So itâs not social media per se, but itâs certainly social media adjacent.
Lmao because you changed media to news/links it's somehow adjacent?
I can't believe the number of comments like this one. All these online platforms are social media
Lemme isnât a social network like Facebook or Instagram or TikTok
Facebook isn't like instagram, instagram isn't like tiktok, tiktok isn't like lemmy, Lemmy isn't like Twitter, but they are all social media.
When people find communities like making bread or wtv and share tips and pictures, that's networking. Plenty of support communities too.
Most create content, and post it publicly for other social circles to see their media. It's social media lol
you're using a pretty arbitrary definition for your opinion, and i disagree.
Ah yes, the arbitrary definitions of the dictionary are my opinion. Well formed argument
Being petulant and throwing a tantrum isnât really a good argument either.
So now i'm "throwing a tantrum" because saying I was inventing definitions (from the dictionary) didn't work. Seems like youre the one throwing a tantrum because you were wrong. My argument is fine and far from pedantic. Saying "news and links" aren't "media" is what's pedantic
Lol
this isnt even kind of true. most users of these systems post nothing. the content posters are a very small, valuable contingent compared to the lurkers/viewers.
Yeah that's a badly written sentence. "Most post for other social circles to see their media when they create content".
Doesn't change the arguments that this is social media. Lemmings and reditors just like to feel special
so the term social media involves any written word where more than one person can see it. got it.
Essentially , but that wouldn't be totally correct, youre framing it that way to make a strawman. The definition is:
So written words, shared on a platform made to exchange words and images publicly for others to discuss/comment on, if you really don't want to use the dictionary.
I do not, while yes you can socialize I think it intended to be used as an aggregator unlike other sites. Much like you can discuss(forum) and shop in other social media sites.
Fell like it could be used as social media, but I tend to use it as a forum
Lemmy is social media. Reddit is sociopath media
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.
I don't think they are. In my view, social media is either personal ( i.e. pictures on Facebook, Instagram, or Snapchat ) or short + very mainstream ( Twitter, TikTok). Reddit has too many niches that collectively make up an enormous chunk of the platform, plus it is very anonymous. I'd argue that the same is true of YouTube, and a lot of the content is closer to TV and journalism.
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.
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.
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."
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.
I didn't know of any studies claiming either way but what I was referring to happens on sites like Facebook, too
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.
Absolutely social media. On Facebook i mostly followed groups - cannabis, gardening, work related interests, local news, etc. Same as here.
I feel like it's similar to social media, but serves a different purpose at least in my use of it. With social media sites like Facebook and Instagram I'm mostly interacting with people I know in real life. To me it seems closer to Youtube, because for both of those it connects me more to larger cultural or artistic things, rather than what's going on with my friends.
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.
No
It's all social media as the content of the site is generated by users interacting with each other.
The difference you've identified is between individualist & content-focused social media.
Most networks are the individualist kind, you follow people and they post about their lives for the most part
Reddit & lemmy are primarily content focused social media as you follow topics and post about them