[Nursie]

> This site is social media.

Is it?

If so then I would say the term "social media" has more or less lost all meaning.

To me HN is more like an old-school forum - it has a focus and it has a mod team to keep the rails on the discussion and keep the topics vaguely on topic.

[quotemstr]

My point is that it's hard to define social media in a way that excludes HN but includes the services that the activist sort thinks are disrespecting the gods of the city and corrupting the youth. Laws must be rooted in conduct, not identy.

[Nursie]

I'm not convinced it's that hard. I've pointed out a few ways that it differs significantly.

There are others major differences like the lack of infinite doomscrolling, or the personalised feed to optimise engagement.

To the wider point that maybe we should be preventing kids from accessing classes of things rather than particular services - yeah probably, but it's much easier to manage a blocklist starting with the worst offenders, and that might be a good enough start down the path of harm reduction.

[graykey31]

Start with classic conditioning that’s implemented in every large social media platform and go from there.

Or go in reverse, look at research into correlation between mental health issues and social media use and extrapolate contributing factors, from those extract the features

Should give a starting point for nailing down the definition.