I keep falling into the same trap as well, when telling people I quit using “social media” but am very much active on social media platforms - just not the ones controlled by big tech.
Maybe we need a shorthand for “profit-driven algorithm-controlled influencer cesspools” so we can separate it from “non-profit decentralized social media platforms” like Lemmy and Mastodon?
I know about the lack of security and the abundance of cameras open to the Internet, but AI companies should have little to no incentive training their image generation algoritms on those often poor-quality feeds.
Is there a story behind this that I’ve missed?
It’s not like nation state actors (or APT:s working for them) would ever need to black-box hack their way into a network made up by cameras from a domestic company. They’d just put a gag order on the company and force them into handing over silent backdoor access. In order of preference: using an existing backdoor for LEO:s, adding a new one in a firmware update, or requesting all source code so they can develop an exploit on their own.
Here is an archived version of the link, as the original seems to be dead: https://archive.ph/aDmgK
Coincidentally(?), just a few weeks before the government of Sweden proposed this change of the law to force Signal to implement a backdoor/logging mechanism, the Swedish army requested that all their employees switch to Signal for private communication…
While I completely agree with you on all arguments about the dangers of algorithm-based platforms where eyeball count and time spent in apps (ad revenue) are the primary reasons behind their very existence, I disagree on your definition for the term social media.
I tried to find some sources for your definition, but for example the Wikipedia article on social graphs define Facebook as an online social network (although it also calls it a social media platform).
Judging by the list of social networking services, the definition (at least on Wikipedia) seems to lean towards “any site where you can add people as friends” (thus building the social graph you refer to).
Personally, I think that term fits better with your description (platforms based entirely on a social graph), while online social media is a broader term describing any online medium on which we socialize with other people - graph-based or not. Old-school forums and chat rooms included, even if we didn’t call them that back then.