this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2025
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It's exactly social media, just because it's the one you like doesn't make it less so.
"websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking." -oxford
"forms of electronic communication (such as websites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (such as videos)" - Merriam Webster
Lemmy and forums fit the bill pretty clearly.
That's sounds like everything on the world wide web if not the entire internet.
The distinction is "through which users".
Merely putting something online does not make it social media. The key is the ability for users/passers-by to add their own content and/or comments, which then allows for interaction between users.
I mean, not really. Your online banking or bill pay site isn't social media, neither are (most) storefronts. A simple site disseminating information ( https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ as a bit of a contrived example ) has no direct engagement or content creation between users and no community forming.
But it makes sense that most of the hobby/fun website and applications will be social media because the primary purpose of the Internet is to connect computers and by extension humans and humans like to interact with each other, the main thing the internet does is let us talk together. It's not implicitly a bad thing that we do it.
While the term didn't exist at the time, I would also classify newsgroups and BBS's as social media as well.
And forums predated the term “social media.”
I wholeheartedly and respectfully disagree. Social media focuses on following individuals, not topics. There is no incentive to follow or be followed on a forum, and being pseudonymous really kills the "social network" part of that definition.
Edit: typos
I've had this discussion with many people. Just because that's how you define it, doesn't mean that is how it's actually defined. We aren't talking about your definition, we are talking about a government's decision.
I think it would be foolish to expect any governing or organization to classify sites/services like lemmy or reddit as something other than social media, when they are literally completely made up of users interacting which each other with all of the content being posted by users.
Also, you can argue about your definition all day, but the Australian government's decision included Reddit, lemmy likely has not yet been affected due to the gov just not knowing of its existence.