[bryanlarsen]

> HN is not social media in any normal sense of the word.

The article's main claim is that traditional social media is not social media any more. That Facebook et al are now junk entertainment. So IMO HN hews much closer to the traditional role of social media than Facebook et al do.

[eszed]

That's what I took away from it, too. Facebook circa 2008 was great: your friends talked what were up to; everyone posted their pictures from that party last night; you didn't see anything from anyone who wasn't at most a second-degree connection. There were problems - people were jerks, and worse, and some people got pulled into chasing clout, and promoted bullshit - but they were human-scale problems, and you could largely scrub your feed from things / people like that. Unfortunately for the entire world, that sort of use wasn't profitable enough.

[Gigachad]

The problem for Facebook is there is a limit to how much your friends would post. You could check Facebook for 15 minutes and then you had seen everything your friends had posted and had to come back tomorrow for more. New Facebook/instagram can trap users in hours of scrolling video in a zombie like state.

[Gigachad]

HN is more like a forum where strangers discuss ideas. Old school social media was a place you posted life updates to your friends and family. New social media is content creator short form video while the majority of users are entirely passive consumers.