Not that user but I don't think this is as difficult as you're making it out to be?
On Reddit, Instagram, Tiktok et al I can create a community on that platform. I can get find other people into Booktok, I can join the Rowing subreddit, I can get into Knittinggram or whatever. Posters expect roughly their micro-community to see their posts, users expect to see their micro-community's posts.
On hacker news I see the same community everyone else does. If HN was a vBulletin forum with threads posted for links it would function almost 1:1 the same, I guess all you'd need to change is a modification for making threads bump on vote behaviour instead of latest-post.
TL;DR. If you ask me, the essence of social media today is the algorithm and the "social curation". Is what I see dictated by some behind the scenes algorithm and by the mob (votes, views, engagement, flags, clicks)? It's social media.
But fair enough. Don't forums have subforums for different interests, topics and specific discussions and sub-communities? They have the option to follow other members or topics in a customized consumption experience. In my personal experience on large and small forums, including those I administered or moderated, most users lived their entire life in specific subforums. The user that only posted in the CPU subforum, or the Nikon subforum. The user who created the "photos of flowers" or "case modding" topic and only hung around there with kindred souls in their micro-community. Forums were really reddit at a smaller scale.
> I guess all you'd need to change is a modification for making threads bump on vote behaviour instead of latest-post.
This is downplaying the weight the hidden algorithm has on what you see on HN. Much like every other social media site and very much unlike classic forums, submissions and comments here live and die at the hand of an algorithm that decides whether today you get to read about the Israel/Gaza conflict, about Democrats/Republicans. This algorithm is driven on one hand by the social aspect (people deciding what's media and what isn't, hence the "social"), on the other hand by some obscure engagement rules that none of us can see or define.
I don't make it "seem" more complicated, it "is" more complicated because experts don't fully agree on exactly what social media is. Everyone tries to use their experience, preference, and common sense and these all vary.
P.S. The current top comment isn’t there because it’s the most recent, the only objectively correct one, or a mod pinned it. It’s there because the algorithm driven by social engagement decided it’s the media I should see first.
You're equating subreddits to forums but on forums people recognised other posters and the average subreddit poster will never read the same username twice, if they even notice they're there.
I see the argument you're making, but it's not convincing. These just aren't similar types of social engagement.
> The current top comment isn’t there because it’s the most recent, the only objectively correct one, or a mod pinned it. It’s there because the algorithm driven by social engagement decided it’s the media I should see first.
When people neglect to vote that they like the comment you posted, or they vote that they didn't like the thing you posted, this is algorithm driven by social engagement.
When the forum software which sorts by newest-posted-first bumps your thread off the front page because no one cared enough to reply that was also an algorithm driven by social engagement.
It seems a lot to me like the "hidden algorithm" part is the same? It is still the users indicating more/no more in the end.
Social media is a service where people who know each other in real life communicate mostly about things happening to them personally.
Online Publishing is process by which people, who largely don't know each other in real life, publish their content for others to consume via an online service.
A Link Aggregator is a service where people publish links to outside web services and users vote to establish the ranking on the aggregator.
The only reason any of this is debatable is because old social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter stopped being Social Media and switched to Online Publishing and people are having trouble updating their vocabulary.
I said so above. I think originally they were "online spaces that augmented a real world community". Even twitter, you mostly started by following people you knew or had heard of.
I get that this isn't at all where we are any more. And y'know, everyone's gonna use terms to mean whatever they want. I'm fine with that. I guess I just think its pointless if "social media" means "anything online where people can write messages"
>What are the clear criteria that make something social media
I have no idea why people are making some mysterious deep question out of this, wikipedia quite literally offers a definition[1]. Web 2.0 based platforms, user generated content, social networking including social mechanisms such as followers, groups and lists.
This doesn't apply to HN. You could randomly assign everyone a new name tomorrow and it wouldn't matter. Identity is virtually irrelevant here, there are no mechanisms to connect users to each other, there are no networks of people, users do not generate their own content and there is a criterion that what is discussed is of of public, not merely social or personal interest.
If some crash wiped out all HN users tomorrow and we'd all start over at zero almost nothing would change. If that happend on social media, like Instagram, the site would be dead. That's the social part.
> This doesn't apply to HN. You could randomly assign everyone a new name tomorrow and it wouldn't matter. Identity is virtually irrelevant here
This is wildly untrue. I follow specific people here and I recognize names all the time. It would be super confusing if some of the people I'm interested in hearing from completely different names. And comments are content. I read old threads all the time. If that all went away, a huge part of how I use this site would be gone.
What do you think social media is? What are the clear criteria that make something social media, or make it not social media?
If you know HN is not social media that you have a clear demarcation of what is.