You are right. According to the definition of social media, Lemmy is social media. However, “social media” would by definition fit any kind of digital communication media. A forum, or a blog, or an IRC channel are also, by definition, social media.
I would argue that the social media has a distinct association with Facebook, Instagram and the diverse spawns of those, and by association doesn’t fit anything else. At best, we simply lack a different term, which splits “old-school” stuff like forums and blogs. I view lemmy more like a forum. You have categories, and users can go into categories to start discussions. You don’t follow anyone. People also don’t create and post their own content, but rather seek discussions or share other stuff from the internet. Your goal is not reach, follow count or like count.
It is social media, but it’s definitely nothing like Facebook.
We simply lack a better term.
Social networking is about connecting people, which Lemmy as a forum does. You could argue that the function of Lemmy as a link aggregator is more social media like, but I doubt people would consider an RSS feed reader to be social media either.
Social media is like TV, a one-to-many medium, usually with some sort of feed curation to promote certain topics.
I have never heard anyone refer to TV as social media, I have always heard it in context with facebook, twitter and co.
a better objection, which makes me uncertain whether lemmy is social media, is that this is a pseudonymous forum where its not common for users to become friends or know each other, and discussion is not around a specific news site or a specific person, but around specific topics
I didn’t say TV is social media, I said social media is like TV is the sense that it is a one-to-many medium. I could have also used TikTok to explain the difference, but people here are clearly confused about the destinction and it would have been less clear.
pseudonymous forum where its not common for users to become friends or know each other
This isn’t really true for regular commenters. There are even feuds between specific users and so on. I agree though that there are constant attempts by some people who try to make Lemmy more like social media by advocating for dissolving the destinction between communities and instances to turn Lemmy into a dumb meme and news posting app for entertainment purposes.
Lemmy is social media
You are right. According to the definition of social media, Lemmy is social media. However, “social media” would by definition fit any kind of digital communication media. A forum, or a blog, or an IRC channel are also, by definition, social media.
I would argue that the social media has a distinct association with Facebook, Instagram and the diverse spawns of those, and by association doesn’t fit anything else. At best, we simply lack a different term, which splits “old-school” stuff like forums and blogs. I view lemmy more like a forum. You have categories, and users can go into categories to start discussions. You don’t follow anyone. People also don’t create and post their own content, but rather seek discussions or share other stuff from the internet. Your goal is not reach, follow count or like count.
It is social media, but it’s definitely nothing like Facebook. We simply lack a better term.
I would definitely call a forum or IRC channel social media.
I wouldn’t consider blogs social media unless they had a very active comments section.
Media is more audio, video, image. Which fits social media.
Most forums and blogs are text-based or primary text. There is no blog sharing only images/videos/audio as posts. Also no such forum.
That would be my key differentiation - forums and IRC is social, but not really media.
Printed media is definately media, and so are blogs. The social part of it is how people can interact with it.
I think the focus is digital media, and in that space media is the short of multimedia.
I don’t remember what this was about anymore
No, it is a social network. That’s different from social media.
What would you define social media as?
Oxford says.
That definition certainly matches Lemmy.
Social networking is about connecting people, which Lemmy as a forum does. You could argue that the function of Lemmy as a link aggregator is more social media like, but I doubt people would consider an RSS feed reader to be social media either.
Social media is like TV, a one-to-many medium, usually with some sort of feed curation to promote certain topics.
I have never heard anyone refer to TV as social media, I have always heard it in context with facebook, twitter and co.
a better objection, which makes me uncertain whether lemmy is social media, is that this is a pseudonymous forum where its not common for users to become friends or know each other, and discussion is not around a specific news site or a specific person, but around specific topics
I didn’t say TV is social media, I said social media is like TV is the sense that it is a one-to-many medium. I could have also used TikTok to explain the difference, but people here are clearly confused about the destinction and it would have been less clear.
This isn’t really true for regular commenters. There are even feuds between specific users and so on. I agree though that there are constant attempts by some people who try to make Lemmy more like social media by advocating for dissolving the destinction between communities and instances to turn Lemmy into a dumb meme and news posting app for entertainment purposes.