Since so many people are here because they consider the other platforms to be too enshittified, I like calling Lemmy “Antisocial Media”

When I was able to work, I liked to pretend that Reddit - which was still reasonable back then - wasn’t social media to get around the rule that social media wasn’t allowed. I had intended to explain that I thought Facebook, LinkedIn and possibly Twitter were social. Since I didn’t have friends or follows on Reddit, and since I was anonymous, clearly it didn’t count.

I was never called out on it.

But I definitely thought, and still think, that there’s definitely a social element to it. I mean, what’s happening right now?

This isn’t Reddit, of course, but it amounts to the same thing. I’m responding to something written by a human who might actually read it. Conversations happen in the comments. As far as Internet goes, that’s social.

its Social media in the form of Aggretiated forums based on Interests rather.

Like this Lemmy sub here is No stupid questions a gather point for people asking and answer questions.

So you dont follow people here like lets say on twitter or instagram or tiktok , you rather follow topics / interests here.

There’s somewhat of a historical context, where there were forums at first, where people generally used pseudonyms. Then the broad wave of webpages originally dubbed “social media” happened, which wanted users to use their real names. In that context, Lemmy doesn’t feel like social media.

But the strong distinction for platforms to either be pseudonymous or prefer real identies somewhat seized to exist, because it’s not anymore novel to use your real identity on the internet. For example, TikTok has a mixture of folks showing their face, as well as completely anonymous uploaders.

Instead, the definition is becoming more about: Do you interact with other humans? Which is a definite yes for Lemmy.

Not the way I use it. I’m here to get news and entertainment. Without Lemmy, I would just do it piecemeal instead of coming to one place. There definitely is a social aspect but would you call YouTube social media? There is a comment section there too.

I do think an argument could be made, but it’s not in my opinion.

Antisocial Media

Edit: Damn someone already commented it

No: you don’t follow “real identities”, it’s a forum, not a user generated feed of personal life details, the votes are not likes/dislikes of personal content, but upvotes and downvotes to indicate whether that post belongs in that forum or not. For the most part users are not generating any media at all, though they can (exactly like a forum). The basis of the site isn’t around following anyone or the content they’re generating, but instead subscribing to communities.

It’s only social media if your definition of social media is “people commenting on stuff” which would mean that almost every website on the planet is social media. Clearly one of these definitions is wrong and I don’t really understand how we got to the place where “commenting on stuff” made it social media when it’s clearly not.

Interesting question on the fediverse. I tend to think that redditlikes aren’t, while twitterlikes are; so what does it mean if they’re federated? Does it depend on how you access the content?

Maybe it’s a spectrum. Bulletin board forums are on one side, then Stack Overflow, then redditlikes, then twitterlikes, then Instagram-like image sharing, then Facebook on the far other side.

Yes and no. Depends on how you define it

You interact with others digitally on here, which makes it social, but some would argue that it’s a forum aggregate which isn’t a true social media, since it’s moreso used for discussion or support, rather than posting about personal affairs