Comment on I made a self-hostable frontend for instagram.
irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks agoWhat would you define social media as?
Oxford says.
websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking.
That definition certainly matches Lemmy.
poVoq@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
Social networking is about connecting people, which Lemmy as a forum does. You could argue that the function of Lemmy as a link aggregator is more social media like, but I doubt people would consider an RSS feed reader to be social media either.
Social media is like TV, a one-to-many medium, usually with some sort of feed curation to promote certain topics.
Waryle@jlai.lu 2 weeks ago
That’s a totally made up definition from your part. Media is the plural of medium, which means “intermediary”. A social media is just the middleman that allows people to socialize. Lemmy is a social media, as well as a social network.
poVoq@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
Every definition is “made up” 🙄
What I explained is how these terms are commonly used on the fediverse.
And anyways, if “social media” and “social network” is the same, why have two different terms for it?
GunnarGrop@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
There are lot of synonyms, people just choose some words in different contexts based on how they sound. Why use the word “begin” when the word “start” exists?
Waryle@jlai.lu 2 weeks ago
You forgot the “from your part” that is quite important. Language is a consensus, you just invented your own definition and pretend that it is the consensus.
They’re not the same, it’s the square/rectangle thing. A social network is a kind of social media, all social medias are not social network. You could argue that Whatsapp is a social media but not a social network (but the frontier is getting blurry with groups and these kind of things).
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I have never heard anyone refer to TV as social media, I have always heard it in context with facebook, twitter and co.
a better objection, which makes me uncertain whether lemmy is social media, is that this is a pseudonymous forum where its not common for users to become friends or know each other, and discussion is not around a specific news site or a specific person, but around specific topics
poVoq@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
I didn’t say TV is social media, I said social media is like TV is the sense that it is a one-to-many medium. I could have also used TikTok to explain the difference, but people here are clearly confused about the destinction and it would have been less clear.
This isn’t really true for regular commenters. There are even feuds between specific users and so on. I agree though that there are constant attempts by some people who try to make Lemmy more like social media by advocating for dissolving the destinction between communities and instances to turn Lemmy into a dumb meme and news posting app for entertainment purposes.
NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Well Lemmy is not about that at all. I know absolutely Zero people from lemmy.
poVoq@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
That seems to be a you problem.
Of course it is an pseudonymous online forum, so it isn’t about making friends in real-life, but you can make plenty of connections with people online via it.
NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
That isn’t a problem, it is by design. I don’t want to follow you or anyone else. I don’t want to promote myself either. I absolutely do not want to make any connections with people here. I read the aggregated subject feeds, I get clarity or insights from the comments. And that is where it ends. Anonymity makes this all work.