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 primarily 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 (though they maintain that Reddit-like platforms are social media while I do not).
So I’m asking Lemmy now to weigh in to help settle this friendly debate.
Edit: Thanks everyone! From the comments, it sounds like my friend and I are both right and both wrong. lol. Feel free to keep chiming in, but I have to go do the 9-5 thing that pays my mortgage and cloud hosting bills.
I get that same gotcha from people, too. Even if they are technically correct, they should be a good friend and acknowledge what you really meant. Flexing on Facebook or LinkedIn or whatever is very different from shitposting on here or reddit.
It’s just awkward and unnecessary to have to say “verified user social media versus anonymous social media” when we can lump Meta, X, and Microsoft under Social Media as a blanket term.
I guess the blanket term for reddit and Lemmy and 4chan type sites could be “meme sites” or “link sharing sites” or whatever.
We need a cool new term for it, one that is easy to say and memorable. Fediverse is pretty cool, but only applies to a subset of those.
Someone else in this thread used the term “nonsense aggregator” and I think that’s my new favorite word for it.
I love it!