What makes Hacker News a social media website?
Sure the occasional "Promoted post" is way less than say Reddit or mid-roll ads.
The difference is it’s not deliberate, it’s just how they get us to rank training data for ChatGPT 5.
For a real social media the content should be ranked by the likes of my peers, a feature non existent on HN
Imagine attending party where whenever you finished a sentence, everyone who was listening immediately responded with a silent thumbs up / thumbs down in response. Pretty dystopian. The Onion did a sketch illustrating the problem a few years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFpK_r-jEXg
By this definition, HN is halfway to being social media. There are metrics, but they aren't displayed publicly.
That was the sweet spot IMO. The days before things were constantly "going viral". Sometimes memetic speedbumps are a good thing.
I think we need more forums outside of mega-communities like Reddit or even HN, but at least there are many that are still alive:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41783682
Also, things were going viral even before the mid-'00s when the concept consolidated. All Your Base and Star Wars Kid went viral before it was called that, even if they garnered a fraction of the mindshare of the general public. Even that dancing CGI baby qualifies.
Otherwise, I would think of "social media" as places where visitors get the opportunity to be equal participants. Anyone can post, anyone can comment in places like these (including forums), but in a blog only one can post and the rest comment.
Popularity metrics facilitate popularity contests.
And popularity metrics facilitate mob rule. Lone voices of dissent get steamrolled.
Reddit is especially bad, IMO. It's almost like it was designed as a confirmation bias engine.
The frustrating part is that voting systems also solve a genuine quality-filtering problem. HN does a good job of balancing the costs and benefits, but I suspect there are other viable approaches.
Not looking for a fight or anything. I'm just curious about different perspectives and definitions of social media. The responses so far have been interesting
Social media is many people speaking to many
HN is social media
HN is definitely on the social media end of the spectrum. For example, all your listed examples have very hands-on and comprehensive, opinionated editorial control. HN has moderation, but not really editorial control per se.
social media is a definition of sourced content, nit the quality of the latter
It lacks the connection between the commenters.
You can’t follow or block comments, or at least filter or sort them
May as well disable comments and treat it like a user updated RSS feed, discuss links elsewhere.
STEM degrees and 20+ years in Eng; hardware then software
This community isn’t really peddling anything that hasn’t been done before; just like the story mode politics and economics often complained about
What’s that? You have a new state manager or a machine and some math euphemisms that translate cleanly to other math objects known for a century? WOW!
…There’s no beating physics and it doesn’t care humans exist. No matter how much symbolism we write down to represent it, it’s not imbuing us with magic powers. We just meat suits like everyone else. Get over yourselves; this a momentary social bubble that will vanish like all the ones they say came before
Really look forward to ML generation of new math built on the same old axioms so we can light a bunch of PhDs hanging on walls on fire
And that's 'ugh' in English. ;)