The OP doesn't seem to make a difference between social media for consuming content that the "algorithm" crams down your throat and simple group chats that are usually closed and invite only.
Tbh I have a feeling it's the kids' fault. They call everything social media now. No separate names for FB and WhatsApp even though they do totally different things.
> Depending on interpretation, other popular platforms that are sometimes referred to as social media services include YouTube, Letterboxd, QQ, Quora, Telegram, WhatsApp, Signal, LINE, Snapchat, Viber, Reddit, Discord, and TikTok.
The broad interpretation that includes Reddit would also categorise HN as social media which I think is fair.
I think the problem actually is the adults that are not being specific about which problems they want to stop when they broadly say that social media is bad.
Like you say, the problem is specifically things like algorithms that are tuned for engagement, which results in all kinds of negative effects.
That being said even this is not specific enough. HN although different is also run on an algorithm that is meant to surface the most interesting things. The site rules on HN avoid some of the bad effects, but it’s still possible to be negatively impacted in other ways like checking HN too often and too long instead of doing other things.
> Look at how broad the definition on Wikipedia is.
But wikipedia doesn't make up definitions, just lists the commonly used meaning.
> I think the problem actually is the adults that are not being specific about which problems they want to stop when they broadly say that social media is bad.
Adults are also talking about cell phone addiction, like browsing FB/Instagram on your laptop is any better.
> HN although different is also run on an algorithm that is meant to surface the most interesting things.
Is it? I thought it was human upvotes and maybe a few human mods...
It would be interesting to determine why HN still works btw. It's a pretty unified community that is fairly large.
Is the main reason that it's basically a non profit?
> I thought it was human upvotes and maybe a few human mods
That’s the algorithm of HN :)
It computes the score of posts based on some combination of time since posted + number of comments + number of upvotes, etc.
> It would be interesting to determine why HN still works btw. It's a pretty unified community that is fairly large.
> Is the main reason that it's basically a non profit?
Yea I think so. Being driven not for profit, plus having a specific overarching guideline for what type of content belongs here;
> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
Tbh I have a feeling it's the kids' fault. They call everything social media now. No separate names for FB and WhatsApp even though they do totally different things.