[cucumber3732842]

The fact that they intentionally include a rightthing/wrongthink button and keep score is a fundamental difference between modern "social media" and legacy BBSes and forums where there was no score keeping. Perhaps keeping score of rightthink is not enough to make HN social media, but it's certainly enough to not put it in the same bucket as forums and BBSes

[al_borland]

Having some sort of recommendation algorithm seems to also be a defining feature of modern social media, which is something old school forums didn’t have.

[aoshifo]

Of course old forums had score keeping, maybe not on upvote but number of posts, but still