[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.