[kodah]

People have tried to define what social media is. Rather than responding immediately I tried to think about what makes places like Facebook and Twitter so toxic.

For some context I don't consider things like forums to be social media. As an early internet denizen I had lots of thoughtful discourse with folks that reminds me of what I experience at HN. I continue to use IRC, which I also don't consider to be social media.

So what makes them different? I think it's the underlying technology. The graph, our ability to search it and correlate immediate (mostly irrelevant) commonality is what makes things dangerous.

Humans are full of dumb or awful thoughts. They'll combat these ideas or thoughts with alternatives regularly which end up referring to as cognitive dissonance. The result is that these lesser ideas widdle away or drop off completely. On social media, the graph doesn't forget and continues to tie you to people, ideas, and thoughts that are increasingly useless. While this sells ads and generates interest in new products it doesn't align well to the way humans have discourse, socialize, or just relate in general.

That to say, HN isn't social media to me.