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Comment by ab3rC1te | Hacker News Reader

I closed my Facebook account in 2009 and stopped using all social media accounts since then. So I couldn't be eligible for being paid to deactivate an account that doesn't exist, but I wouldn't want to be paid to have account period. Countless hours of peoples life are wasted scrolling through feeds that amount to a pile of dirt sitting in your yard.

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Yet here you are, on social media.

It's really gross to consider simple forums to be social media, but I guess you're right per the definition.

Usenet and IRC are social media. MUDs also social media.

What. My brain isn't liking this.

This isn’t social media. Nor is Reddit or other similar sites. The main criteria is “social”. That means human relationships, friendships, family, etc. I don’t have any sort of relationship with anyone on HN, Reddit, etc. We are all strangers passing in the night. Basically anti-social media.

But it’s not really. What we’re doing here is by definition social. It’s just a different flavor of social. It’s surprising to me that you think talking to other people on the internet is somehow anti-social.

It's not anti-social, but it is anti-"social media". HN has made a lot of wonderful design choices that prevent it from becoming Reddit or Twitter. Hiding points on comments, not showing indicators for replies (making it easier to move on), solid moderation that allows for diverse viewpoints while avoiding a lot of toxicity, etc.

This is not considered a social media site. Just because someone creates a definition of what they think a term should be defined as to group all social interaction together is bullshit. One could say because my program here makes bank transactions automatically for me would be deemed social media as well, because the media of a mass said so. Email and a password are grouped now as social media by your terms and the masses. This is merely a place to receive information based on links that people provide as news. I am just going to group you into the idiot group that thinks everything internet related is social media.

... and wasting time on hobbies, and tv, and video games, and religious meetings, and comicons, and hiking the same trail hundreds of thousands before you have, and possibly breathing. Why do people also let others know they dropped social media and are probably better human beings than the rest of us who use it in moderation...

I never said I was better than you. I was merely making a point that 95 percent of people waste their time on interacting with social media sites. I can't believe your comparing hobbies to this issue. I can understand TV and video games. I think its a good thing to let other people know your not using social media sites. Its really an addiction like using any other main stream drug.

Area Man Rejects Social Media, Prefers Discussing Topics With People on the Intern————

> stopped using all social media accounts

I keep wondering how I should describe this site to people, without using the term "anti-social media"...

These things were called forums before social media was a term. It is kind of a forum around aggregated articles.

This seems to fit better. HN is even on the list. [0]

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_news

A forum is not anything like social media. People think that any internet site where UGC is posible is social media? Not.

HN, for instance, is not based on finding friends, creating glamorous profiles, posting daily and weekly updates about one’s life, or reading other’s posts. It has no images, hashtags, auto playing videos, or your cousin and high school sweetheart arguing in the comments of your post about your luncheon at the Hilton if you should be even at the Hilton because of your or their political views.

No, HN is just a topical forum. The only shadow of social media on it is when people post links to YouTube, which I don’t get or understand why it’s allowed. Why not post all the links to YouTube every day? If O wanted to watch videos about Perl, I’d go to YouTube.

I suspect there may be two or three different definitions of “social media”. What happens in the comment threads on internet forums is definitely social and writing is a form of media. People receive karma for posting good content just like people get likes, shares, and retweets on other sites. We may not use our real names but we all still have an identity. It may be more similar than you realize. I totally agree we’re anything but the type of basic crap you describe. But we’re not anti-social, either.

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