nah I’ve never ‘gathered a misunderstanding’ of it. Somewhere in the past 5 years, everyone and their mom has started referring to idiotic things as being social media, like roguetrick claiming that Wikipedia is social media (they even provided an ‘academic’ source (from a school of business mind you)).
Social media must be a subset of social networking because the literally concept of a ‘social’ website implies networking. So if all you’re adding to the social element is ‘media’ (rather than just text, like Twitter), then it is by definition a subset. If you see ‘adding’ media as expanding the category, rather than restricting the set of social networking sites to only those with sharing of media, then sure I could see how you think that social networking sites must be a subset of the media sites, since they don’t have media. But I see it as a subset of sites that allow for connections and follows of other users, which would make it a subset in the direction I stated.
From your post history, you’re not generally this obtuse, dying on this hill is frankly silly with the mountain of evidence against you.
I honestly do not care what ‘mountain of evidence’ there is. Some things people are just frankly idiots about and it doesn’t matter what the actual justification for it is, in the current world it’s dumb to continue calling it that. I can give two other examples if you would like, where the majority of people in any given region might refer to something as but it makes no sense from any logical, political, social, ethical, moral, legal, etc. standpoint. The only reason being historical (or etymological), which frankly is a dumb reason, especially in this day and age. We should use words so that they communicate something.
If ‘social media’ refers to anything that exists on the internet (which by the arguments I’ve seen so far, it would literally include 99.99% of websites out there) then it’s a pointless, meaningless word that serves only for politicians to use as a battering ram to remove civil liberties and personal freedoms from citizens. Instead of a law stating “You are now required to verify your ID on every website on the internet” they instead can state “You are now required to verify your ID on social media sites” and then that suddenly includes Wikipedia, World of Warcraft, a website bookmarking service called Delicious, and the General Motors blog site (all of these according to roguetrick’s ‘academic’ source of what social media is)! What is the point of the word if it refers to anything and everything under the sun…
locuester@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
I think the words were used not just by different generations, but also different level of users.
As someone who was around and heavily involved in tech during the bbs days, then walled garden services, then internet forums, THEN social networking and media, I agree not with you but with the prior comment.
The dictionary definitions are rewriting history based on a word that hadn’t even been coined yet. They created a definition which retroactively lumped nearly the entire internet under that term. It’s incorrect and unhelpful to do so.
However, given that language changes and us old geeks don’t make the rules, “social media” now indeed includes the entire internet. I can’t argue with the dictionary, but I can explain the reasoning behind my disagreement with the term. I think that’s the same the last person was saying.
borari@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Exactly. The only thing that I really have to add is that I personally draw the line between social media and other types of websites or internet services is whether the service is intended to be used anonymously or connected to a real identity. I’d further divide the anonymous stuff between whether they are intended to be used with handles or without an account at all.
Under that personal definition, I would not consider stuff like BBS, Usenet, forums, AIM, etc., to be social media.
I also wouldn’t consider Discord to be social media tbh, it’s a messaging application. If Discord is social media why isn’t iMessage?
Something like Twitter, BlueSky, or Mastadon could be social media depending on how you use them, but since many people do utilize them with accounts linked to their real identity I would consider them social media.
Then you have the obvious social media stuff like FaceBook, and LinkedIn.
Now that I’m typing this out, stuff like Insta, TikTok, Snap, etc., get weird. I would personally consider them social media, but tons of people use those apps with handles. Maybe in addition to the anonymous or real identity thing there’s also the consideration of whether the site or app is intended to connect you with people you know in meatspace or online.
Yeah, I guess the distinctions I personally use are becoming a bit meaningless now.
locuester@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
I also used to make a distinction for apps where the majority of content was rando internet user created. But all the apps are now just fulltime creators and very rarely does a true rando go viral.
The “going viral” technique got ruined similarly to how seo ruined search. Completely ruined to the point that the little guy never appears.
locuester@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Yeah when musically/tiktok came along, twitter, insta, snap, and YouTube all copied the model so you’ve got this dual use thing going on there.
tyler@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
Exactly. The ‘academic’ source that roguetrick (not who you replied to) supplied that apparently ‘37 thousand citations’ are using, was written in 2009 and states that Usenet was a social networking site. Just a complete rewrite of history. Notably that ‘academic’ source was from a business school.
Thank you for understanding my point of view. This is complete rewriting of history by (mostly) news corporations that serve only to make people mad. And ‘social media’ became an easy buzzword to refer to anything that had something wrong with it. This got very bad in the past 5-10 years (time passes weird now).
you can argue with the dictionary, that’s what I’m doing here. A term that refers to everything under the sun is a meaningless word, especially when it’s weaponized against its citizens, exactly like the UK is doing with ‘social media’ currently, by having it literally encapsulate every website out there, but making citizens think that it doesn’t. The only way you convince the dictionary to change is by telling people that social media doesn’t mean forums. That social media doesn’t mean YouTube. That social media doesn’t mean Wikipedia. (I have some other words I’d like to argue as well, but they’re completely unrelated to this thread).
So that’s what I’m doing here. Telling people that including these things in this all encompassing meaningless word not only devalues the word, but makes it so that politicians can fuck us over anytime they want by using the ‘social media’ boogeyman, and then firewalling Wikipedia, or anandtech.com, or fordf150ownersforum.com, etc.etc.etc.
roguetrick@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
What you’re hinting at is a little broader. It’s not so much language redefining things as much as users rejecting labels doesn’t matter. For a functional definition like social media, people do and did reject being defined as that to preserve some sense of community distinctiveness. But just like punk artists rejecting that they’re in the genre or even musicians, the small groups view on the subject isn’t as important as the functional reality and the greater social utility of the term.
In regards to rewriting history, it’d be like rejecting calling da vinchi’s helical air screw a proto helicopter. Just because the term was coined later doesn’t mean that it’s rewriting history to apply the concept. It’s not unhelpful to define a concept and review it’s impacts. I honestly think it’s very helpful in examining eternal September myself, for example, and seeing it’s parallels in the walled gardens and subsequent social networks and how they all approached the same challenges and implemented some of the same tools.
In essence, the broad term exists precisely because it defines something that is useful in ways “the Internet” is not.