I mean sure I use this website, so I suppose that counts to some degree, but not very many hours per week and I use it to keep up on tech news and post occasional comments.
This is a comparison I see a lot, but I really disagree with it. The structure of this kind of website is very very different from modern social media. I will say, though, that I don't have it anymore so I'm going off of how it was in 2018. I'd imagine that the constant feedback mechanisms have gotten worse, and continue to play off of people's anxiety and sense of self in the worst possible ways.
Asking what's appealing about social media is like asking what's appealing about telephones. Social media has taken the place of a primary communication appliance for many people. It's useful, despite its many downsides. I suspect most people don't have a deeply pathological relationship with it, either.
I managed to stay on Mastodon by using bird.makeup to follow people who aren't in the Fediverse. Hopefully when BlueSky opens up someone will build a bridge between it and AP so we can follow them as well!
Telephone is a communication device, these other services have communication options, but it doesn’t seem to be the main feature.
I don’t have any interest in subscribing to someone’s status updates. And I also have no interest in sending status updates out into the internet.
I only have an interest in direct messaging which is how I view a telephone.
I think HN is decent but it also is a tech echo chamber.