[the_af]

I must agree with the parent commenter: HN is social media.

Oh, maybe it's not exactly like facebook or Twitter, but it ticks so many other boxes.

I could list many, and argue about them (arguing: another staple of social media), but the most important to me is that HN is effectively a procrastination tool, and it's associated with that mental "fix" of instant gratification.

It's different from facebook in that HN is more heavily moderated and more focused, but other than that, it triggers the same kind of (bad) habits, at least in my case.

[incompatible]

You are free to pick a different definition. "Permits arguing and procrastination" would make it a pretty big category, including all online forum and chat systems back to the Usenet / BBS and maybe CompuServe / Prodigy days (I don't know enough about the last two).

[MattRix]

uh yeah, those things are absolutely social media as well

[incompatible]

Usenet seemed more social than HN, as I remember it from the 1990s. You'd go back to the same groups, and see the same people posting. On HN, I don't usually see any name I remember.

[the_af]

I regularly see names I remember on HN: tptacek, pron, dragonwriter, lmm, coldtea, etc.

It's not exactly the same as contacts on Facebook, though it's closer to Reddit. Definitely social media.