[kibwen]

We should not pretend that message boards are not subject to many of the same pitfalls as more conventional social media. At the same time, we should not be so overbroad as to lump message boards and social media into the same category.

On a message board, 1) I don't have a profile that's rich with personal information, 2) I don't have a dedicated wall for my musings, 3) I don't have an individually-curated timeline, and 4) I don't have first-class social connections embedded in the platform.

Point 1 means that there is much less ability to identify me for the purposes of advertising, which avoids much of the perverse incentive that comes with monetizing social media users.

Point 2 means that I have much less personal attachment to this place as an outlet for creative self-expression, which helps to defuse both a sense of toxic entitlement that I might feel on behalf of the platform providers, as well as the sunk-cost fallacy that might keep me active here even if I no longer experienced pleasure from being here.

Point 3 keeps filter bubbles from fractally proliferating; there is still one bubble, but it's the bubble that everyone else on the platform inhabits.

Point 4 provides a mixture of all of the above benefits.

Again, this isn't to say that message boards are perfect or that social media must be inherently bad, but IMO the differences are important.

[threatofrain]

> we should not be so overbroad as to lump message boards and social media into the same category

The details you list seem incidental to the social media of today. Reddit fits much of what you say but most people would classify Reddit as clearly social media even though Reddit is closer to HN than FB by this divvying of conceptual boundaries. Perhaps the social media of tomorrow involves no wall and meetings in Oculus land. Then we would be talking about how social media is psychologically or socially problematic because of 3D immersion.

IMO the easiest bright line between social media and "something else" media is that social media is populated with content by amateurs or indie producers. If FB became 100% business then it would lose its credentials as "social" media and simply become "traditional" media, notwithstanding any timeline, wall, bubble or heuristic curation. If YouTube became all professionals then it would just become HBO, regardless of whether there are subscriptions, notifications, or channels.

[kibwen]

In recent history Reddit has added things like profiles and walls in an attempt to pivot towards conventional social media, which serves to illustrate the difference. I'm not saying the line is perfectly clear, but I am saying that using "social media" to encompass both Facebook and HN dilutes the phrase beyond the point of meaning. Different platforms have different advantages and disadvantages, and after a certain point labels cease to have descriptive power if they get applied overbroadly. We should focus on precise features of each platform rather than get bogged down in the usual "is social media bad" -> "is this platform social media" -> "is this platform bad by the transitive property".

As for the "indie producer" aspect, that's certainly one useful property to consider, but I don't think it's sufficient since pre-internet we had things like 'zine culture which were the bastion of indies, and I would find it a stretch to call zines a form of social media, rather than just indie media.

[root_axis]

I don't agree that reddit is a social media site as it is typically understood. What is your reasoning to suggest it's "clearly" social media?