Comment on I made a self-hostable frontend for instagram.
Waryle@jlai.lu 2 weeks agoThat’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).
poVoq@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
Wat? Sorry, but your definition is even further from anything that could be called a consensus. You could maybe argue that WhatsApp is a social network, but it definitly isn’t social media and it is completly outlandish to claim so. Where do you even get the “media” part in it? You know, compound words are still made up of induvidual words that have a meaning by itself. Kinda funny that you accuse me of “making up definitions” 🙄
But sure there are some blurry edges between them. Like of Instagram is primarily used for social media, but the direct messages are more used like a social network.
Waryle@jlai.lu 2 weeks ago
I’ll quote myself because I already answered that: « Media is the plural of medium, which means “intermediary” ». That’s the textbook definition of the word media, and the consensus about what it means.
Whatsapp is the middleman/platform, thus intermediary (= “medium/media”), between two people socializing. I don’t understand what you don’t understand.
A social network is social media that allows to form groups or communities. Two people communicating is not a network, the whole point of a network is interconnection between members of a group.