I had this discussion with a friend, and we really couldn’t reach a consensus.
My friend thinks Lemmy (and other Reddit-like platforms) is social media because you’re interacting with other people, liking/disliking submissions, and all the content is user-generated.
I think it isn’t because you’re not following individual people, just communities/topics. Though I concede there are some aspects of social media present, I feel that overall it’s not because my view of social media is that you’re following individuals.
In my view, these link aggregator + comment platforms are more like an evolution of forums which both my friend and I agreed don’t meet the criteria to be considered social media.
So I’m asking Lemmy now to weigh in to help settle this friendly debate.
So yes i do think it is social media. But they are more akin to the old internet, or Facebook before it got massive and bad.
For exampke? There is not a massive algorithm, especially a personalized algorithm (obviously Top and Hot are technically algorithms, but they democratically place popular posts to anyone who hasn’t blocked/is following the community).
For many comparisons they are obviously social media, but for other types of comparisons I don’t think it’s a great match.