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HN is social media. Social media is a spectrum. You can imagine HN like a documentary channel compared to Facebook’s reality TV, but even “documentaries” can b
by armchairhacker 5mo ago
HN is social media. Social media is a spectrum.
You can imagine HN like a documentary channel compared to Facebook’s reality TV, but even “documentaries” can be dopamine sinks that aren’t actually informative (or accurate).
(But personally, I see lots of short and pure opinion posts here, documentaries are long and at least pretend to contain facts; so I’d hesitate to compare it to a documentary channel even with the caveat.)
- titzer 5mo agoYou don't see pictures and videos directly on the site. It's text links and text comments and discussions. In the minimal sense of the word, even printed text is media, so it's technically true that HN is social media, but I think it's more like a news aggregator and discussion forum.
- armchairhacker 5mo agoHow does being text only make it not social media? Good explanation at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48445343 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48445343
- kelseyfrog 5mo agoBecause the people who think HN is social media and avoid social media aren't going to see this and respond. It's a selection bias.
- titzer 5mo ago> OP: The pedantry involved in that comparison is extremely tiresome.
- kelseyfrog 5mo agoMaybe take a rest from HN if pedantry is fatiguing?
- everdrive 5mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- dust-jacket 5mo agosee IMO it isn't. HN is an online community. Same as forums, and BBSs were. I don't think they were social media really - they're online spaces that form around a shared interest, where Facebook etc were originally online spaces that augmented a real world community. But we're a long way from that now.
- liotier 5mo ago> HN is an online community. Same as forums, and BBSs were. That is the very definition of social media. "Social media I like" vs. "Social media I don't like" isn't valid categorization.
- dust-jacket 5mo agoif you think social media just means any space online with multiple people in it, then I guess we just disagree on what social media is. Is the linux kernel mailing list social media? was usenet?
- close04 5mo ago> if you think 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.
- dust-jacket 5mo agoI 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"
- chownie 5mo agoNot 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.
- kiicia 5mo agoHN is public forum (one of the last), it's a bit different thing
- armchairhacker 5mo agoReddit is a forum, is it not social media?
- mr_mitm 5mo agoThis comes up often, particularly on Reddit, and I don't think we're doing us any favors by counting it as social media. It has a few substantial differences to Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, et al: - The focus isn't on connecting. It has a "friends" feature (I believe?), but the social graph is extremely weak. - You are not expected to use your real name. On the contrary, it comes off as weird unless you're a celebrity. - There is no algorithm maximizing engagement, or at least not a hyper personalized algorithm that analyzes your scrolling speed and every sensor under the sun feeding into a machine learning system designed by professional psychologists to keep you hooked. - Individuality isn't as encouraged. The user name is small, and there are no avatars, or at least used to be (I don't use the new interface very much). The focus is on the content instead. I suppose you can find a definition of "social media" that includes Reddit, and surely the differences are fluid, especially since we can recognize some efforts by Reddit to become more like the real social media sites, but I vote for putting it in a different category for the sake of discussion.
- trollbridge 5mo agoI've never appreciated the low-effort handwaves of claiming that HN, old-school Internet forums, USENET, etc. are "social media", simply because they aren't. HN's primary medium is text, often headlined by a link to some other site. That isn't social media. HN makes it quite difficult (technically impossible, but you can link out) to embed media such as videos and pictures, which makes it fundamentally different than "social media". Many other Internet forums are similar--they might technically have the capability, but the prevailing culture might be that people rarely do it. Adding to this is that HN has surprisingly little AI-generated content in its discussion threads, and links to AI-generated blog posts, etc. tend to get dogpiled on or simply not upvoted and don't get attention. That makes it fundamentally different from other social media platforms today.
- armchairhacker 5mo agoHN has comments which are social media. I don’t get why people care, because social media isn’t intrinsically bad; I always say “mainstream social media” or “toxic social media” to clarify what I’m referring to. > HN makes it quite difficult (technically impossible, but you can link out) to embed media such as videos and pictures, which makes it fundamentally different than "social media". What’s the difference? Submissions usually include at least one picture, sometimes videos or interactive content. > HN has surprisingly little AI-generated content in its discussion threads, and links to AI-generated blog posts, etc. tend to get dogpiled on or simply not upvoted and don't get attention. I’m sorry, but this isn’t true. HN has less AI than say Reddit, and many users try to combat, but I still frequently see top-voted (obvious) AI-generated articles and less frequently comments. When something has lots of em-dashes and other https://tropes.fyi https://tropes.fyi, I recommend checking on Pangram.
- vitalyan1234 5mo ago[flagged]
- trollbridge 5mo agoComment threads are not “social media”, no matter how badly anyone wants to redefine that they are. They date back to the 1970s on USENET and mailing lists.
- stronglikedan 5mo ago> HN is social media I haven't posted any personal pics, or stories about things that I've done in my life or am currently doing, so how can it be social in the same way that social media is? To me, there's a clear distinction between a news aggregator and discussion forum like HN, and a social media site. Sure, I can post something that I'm working on or a blog post that I've written, but it's still framed as news to be discussed, not a social interaction.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- boomlinde 5mo ago> Sure, I can post something that I'm working on or a blog post that I've written, but it's still framed as news to be discussed, not a social interaction. Discussion is of course a kind of social interaction. You've posted this, which discusses a topic that is only tangentially related to the news item if at all. You can talk about framing all you want, but it ultimately is what it is: spontaneous social interaction between users on the kind of winding paths "unsupervised" discussions naturally take. I'd be surprised if half of people supposedly discussing the "news to be discussed" have RTFA. That doesn't stop interesting discussion on a wide range of topics from happening here. It's not "social in the same way", but Twitter and Facebook aren't "social in the same way" either.
- whateveracct 5mo agoForums came before social media. It's a forum.
- haunter 5mo agoForums don’t have algorithmic front page and upvote/downvote system You can’t bump a thread to the top of HN so everyone sees it
- whateveracct 5mo agoI don't think that quite makes it social media though.
- moffkalast 5mo agoNo, people just keep reposting the same shit over and over instead. But the end effect is very similar, dang even links to old posts almost every time.
- fl4regun 5mo agoby this standard, isn't a public bulletin board even included in the term "social media"?
- sethammons 5mo agoSocial media started in the early 1500s if we squint with this logic. Martin Luther’s ninety-five theses were the OG forum post that went viral, and required a printing press.
- talon8635 5mo agoThe HN comments section certainly feels increasingly hostile, manipulative, manipulated, and jokey. It use to be a reprieve, but it’s feeling more and more like every other comment section online. To me anyways.
- anon-3988 5mo agoTell me something that involves other people that isn't a social media then.
- GJim 5mo ago> HN is social media. No! Social media is where one shares ones social life. It's in the name!