Some people say it refers to any online social interaction platform, including forums, Usenet, IRC, and even email; the logical conclusion of this point of view is that the phone network is social media, and one can make the case that so is the postal service. This definition strikes me as too broad; I feel like it was dreamt up by people who have never known a world without facebook.com and try to force predecessors into a bucket where they don’t belong.
Personally, I would define social media as online communication systems which are account-oriented rather than conversation-oriented. Forums and pre-web communication systems are conversation-oriented. Yes, you have an account on a forum, but the forum is structured around threads. You can get notified of replies to a thread, and you might be able to follow individual threads, but you don’t follow individual accounts. Same with Usenet; there are some workarounds to follow individual people, but the entire network is based around threads. IRC doesn’t even need an account.
Social media is all about accounts; the whole idea is that you follow individual people rather than threads. I would further divide social media into post-based and file-based. Post-based social media is built around text posts. Replies to posts are the same as the post they reply to. Posts can have other media attached, but are still text posts with pictures, videos, or sound files stuck on. This includes MySpace, Facebook, the website formerly known as Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, BlueSky, Mastodon, Sharkey, Akkoma, Friendica, Threads.net, and so forth.
In file-based social media, posts consist of non-text files; responses and replies to posts are not the same as the posts themselves. This is things like YouTube, PeerTube (video), Instagram, Pixelfed (pictures), and Castopod (audio files).
ActivityPub allows post-based and file-based social media to interact with each other. Somebody can post a video with PeerTube, and get replies with Mastodon and Sharkey.
Then there’s what might be called the Slashdot model, which covers Slashdot, Fark, Digg, Reddit, Lemmy, Mbin, Piefed, and Substrings. Reddit is an interesting case of something which was not originally social media, but became social media when the people in charge added the ability to follow individual accounts, and have been trying their darndest to add in more and more features from traditional social media.
And that brings us to the threadiverse. Threadiverse programmes are built on ActivityPub, the same protocol that powers Mastodon, Sharkey, Akkoma, Friendica, PeerTube, and Pixelfed, all of which are social media. You use Lemmy, specifically, lemmy.world, and posted this question to a community on the same instance. Lemmy does not currently allow users to follow individual accounts, and thus under my definition, it does not qualify as social media.
However. I use Mbin, and thus I would refer to @NoStupidQuestions@lemmy.world as a magazine rather than a community. (Actually, I mostly use Mastodon, but I’m posting this with my Mbin account). Mbin does allow users to follow individual accounts; in fact, I follow several Lemmy accounts, and I can directly follow your account as well, right from the web interface. I could also follow your account with my Mastodon account. This means that even if Lemmy fails the definition of social media, it looks and acts just like social media to a bunch of things that do.
So is Lemmy social media? Honestly, yeah, I’d say so. Maybe it isn’t social media to Lemmy users, but it is to most of the rest of the Fediverse.
in fact, I follow several Lemmy accounts, and I can directly follow your account as well, right from the web interface.
Is there any point to following Lemmy users though? Like, unlike the rest of the fediverse, Lemmy doesn’t send any activities to followers. They just exist, don’t actually receive anything. Is there even any point to it then?
I don’t think the any interaction definition is too broad at all. Primitive forms of social media such as mailing lists and forum threads form are very similar in functionality to simply following hashtags, or I guess whatever the algorithms suggest.
The distinction using account based versus conversation/thread based is not too helpful, because the majority of users of modern social media don’t really use it to follow accounts, with the majority of their time is spent doomscrolling generic hashtags or algorithm recommendations.
The similarities are easier to see if you think of how people actually used these technologies in their daily lives. Pre Facebook, people would log in and refresh their Usenet, emails, and forums threads to keep in touch with friends and interests. Post Facebook, people would log in and refresh Facebook/Insta instead.
Depends on how you define social media.
Some people say it refers to any online social interaction platform, including forums, Usenet, IRC, and even email; the logical conclusion of this point of view is that the phone network is social media, and one can make the case that so is the postal service. This definition strikes me as too broad; I feel like it was dreamt up by people who have never known a world without facebook.com and try to force predecessors into a bucket where they don’t belong.
Personally, I would define social media as online communication systems which are account-oriented rather than conversation-oriented. Forums and pre-web communication systems are conversation-oriented. Yes, you have an account on a forum, but the forum is structured around threads. You can get notified of replies to a thread, and you might be able to follow individual threads, but you don’t follow individual accounts. Same with Usenet; there are some workarounds to follow individual people, but the entire network is based around threads. IRC doesn’t even need an account.
Social media is all about accounts; the whole idea is that you follow individual people rather than threads. I would further divide social media into post-based and file-based. Post-based social media is built around text posts. Replies to posts are the same as the post they reply to. Posts can have other media attached, but are still text posts with pictures, videos, or sound files stuck on. This includes MySpace, Facebook, the website formerly known as Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, BlueSky, Mastodon, Sharkey, Akkoma, Friendica, Threads.net, and so forth.
In file-based social media, posts consist of non-text files; responses and replies to posts are not the same as the posts themselves. This is things like YouTube, PeerTube (video), Instagram, Pixelfed (pictures), and Castopod (audio files).
ActivityPub allows post-based and file-based social media to interact with each other. Somebody can post a video with PeerTube, and get replies with Mastodon and Sharkey.
Then there’s what might be called the Slashdot model, which covers Slashdot, Fark, Digg, Reddit, Lemmy, Mbin, Piefed, and Substrings. Reddit is an interesting case of something which was not originally social media, but became social media when the people in charge added the ability to follow individual accounts, and have been trying their darndest to add in more and more features from traditional social media.
And that brings us to the threadiverse. Threadiverse programmes are built on ActivityPub, the same protocol that powers Mastodon, Sharkey, Akkoma, Friendica, PeerTube, and Pixelfed, all of which are social media. You use Lemmy, specifically, lemmy.world, and posted this question to a community on the same instance. Lemmy does not currently allow users to follow individual accounts, and thus under my definition, it does not qualify as social media.
However. I use Mbin, and thus I would refer to @NoStupidQuestions@lemmy.world as a magazine rather than a community. (Actually, I mostly use Mastodon, but I’m posting this with my Mbin account). Mbin does allow users to follow individual accounts; in fact, I follow several Lemmy accounts, and I can directly follow your account as well, right from the web interface. I could also follow your account with my Mastodon account. This means that even if Lemmy fails the definition of social media, it looks and acts just like social media to a bunch of things that do.
So is Lemmy social media? Honestly, yeah, I’d say so. Maybe it isn’t social media to Lemmy users, but it is to most of the rest of the Fediverse.
Is there any point to following Lemmy users though? Like, unlike the rest of the fediverse, Lemmy doesn’t send any activities to followers. They just exist, don’t actually receive anything. Is there even any point to it then?
I don’t think the any interaction definition is too broad at all. Primitive forms of social media such as mailing lists and forum threads form are very similar in functionality to simply following hashtags, or I guess whatever the algorithms suggest.
The distinction using account based versus conversation/thread based is not too helpful, because the majority of users of modern social media don’t really use it to follow accounts, with the majority of their time is spent doomscrolling generic hashtags or algorithm recommendations.
The similarities are easier to see if you think of how people actually used these technologies in their daily lives. Pre Facebook, people would log in and refresh their Usenet, emails, and forums threads to keep in touch with friends and interests. Post Facebook, people would log in and refresh Facebook/Insta instead.