[bloudermilk]

My question for you all is: do you consider HN to be social media?

I got off traditional social media (twitter, fb, insta, etc) years ago and feel all the better for it. But I still visit HN and YouTube multiple times daily. For the most part I find those to be information-dense and part of my continual personal development practice. That said, YT in particular has a tendency to draw me into endless shorts holes.

[CactusBlue]

Yes, and it is addicting as any of the others. I quit Twitter and Bluesky a while ago, locked myself out of my Reddit account, but HN is one of the hardest that I found to rid of.

[celticninja]

The reason I stay on HN is the signal to noise ratio is considerably higher here than on any other site.

It isn't even close. Digg.com used to have it and so did reddit, but it degraded so much that they became unuseable.

[whstl]

To me there were two ways of using social media: #1 interacting with people I know about things in my life and #2 interacting with third-party content and then people I don't really know.

To me Facebook, Instagram and Twitter went completely downhill when it became about #2 for me and my social circle. Twitter was the first, followed by Facebook and then Instagram. I just deleted them in that order. To me they became divisive, angry, political, it made following certain friends impossible, it made people addicted to it, it generated influencers, it made certain friends behave strangely IRL (communicating via meme language only).

HN is definitely #2, but way less political due to moderation.

[dlcarrier]

It's the only social media I use. I used to use Reddit too, until they blocked usability/accessibility tools.

YouTube has social media features, but they languish in comparison to its use as a video broadcasting platform. I suppose for people who regularly comment and chat on streams, YouTube is a social media platform, but for the vast majority of its user base, it's more like Netflix than Twitter.

[Forgeties79]

> It's the only social media I use. I used to use Reddit too, until they blocked usability/accessibility tools.

Same. Did lemmy for a while but fell off it. Was just doing the reddit thing again. I’m guilty of that here from time to time but I feel a little more accountable on HN so I generally find I can keep my cool more often than not.

[knuppar]

It's not engagement-optimized social media (good old sepia orange, sorted by upvotes only) but it is social media, albeit in a form closer to private communities. Engagement-optimized social media is definitely the problem for me, hours and hours can fly by. HN + no recs/history yt has been the trusty setup for a while.

[allenu]

I don't think it's quite social media as most people think of it. I treat it more like a message forum.

To me, social media is a broadcast type of media where people are posting for their specific followers and people are following individuals, so you end up with people posting specifically to get more followers (maybe not initially, but it's what fuels further posting).

Hacker News is social, but I don't go here to follow individuals. I usually don't even look at names of who's commenting.

[imoverclocked]

> do you consider HN to be social media?

Yes, because I read/interact with comments. It's possible to just peruse headlines in which case it's less social.

> YT in particular has a tendency to draw me into endless shorts holes

Yeah, especially since there are no horrendous ads. YT on my AppleTV has become unwatchable with minutes of ads for minutes of content.

[neilellis]

YT: Yep the only pay-for-no-adds that I gave in to.

[softwaredoug]

Social media can mean so many things these days, I can't tell anymore.

Each of these things need to be studied separately, IMO. As different social media sites have/less of each of these:

* Algorithmic feed - encouraging rabbit holes, reinforcing clicbait and ragebait

* Comment sections - encouraging pile-ons, and vitriolic debate

* Short form content - TikTok videos, etc, quick, snackable content and destroying people's attention span . Then there's the overall ad-based incentive to put all these together to keep you engaged. TBH the fact hacker news has a different model, makes me feel better about it, rather than caring if its social media or not.

[HeinzStuckeIt]

> Comment sections - encouraging pile-ons, and vitriolic debate

The early millennium blogosphere had comments sections, and lots of vitriolic debate. They inspired XKCD 635, after all. I think the problem today is not the opportunity to comment and debate, but rather the fact that the phone keyboard is the input device for the majority of internet users. Population-wide, phone keyboards discourage longform text and nuance, even if some individuals will claim they can comfortably type just as much as on a physical keyboard.

[kelnos]

I think HN has aspects of social media, but I wouldn't call it that. I do get some similar feelings and "rewards" from reading and commenting on HN that I used to get with Facebook, Instagram, etc. But I quit FB & Insta years ago because those sites were overall making me feel bad and unhappy. HN isn't perfect, and I do occasionally get those negative feelings, but overall I enjoy reading the articles people post, and reading and discussing people's reactions to them.

Certainly I waste some amount of time on HN when I could or should be doing something else, but I think I've also learned a lot from HN, and get to read reasonable points of view that differ from my own.

I think HN's user moderation system (as well as HN's guidelines, and how the in-house moderators moderate and engage with the community) also push more toward HN being a discussion forum and not social media. While HN's moderation isn't perfect, it's not the engagement-at-all-costs popularity contest that plagues most social media sites and makes things unbearable.

[stronglikedan]

Nope, but only because I use it anonymously, same as reddit. To me, context is the key to every designation, so it's not whether a site is or isn't social media. Some platforms support social media usage, but it's the way the individual user uses it that makes it social media to them. I personally do not have a social media presence, and can't see ever wanting one.

EDIT: At best, HN is a link aggregator in the form of a discussion forum.

[Kiro]

I browse TikTok and Instagram anonymously. Does that mean I'm not using social media?

[throawayonthe]

idk, i've never had a non-pseudonymous social media account, but that didn't stop the algorithmic feed pull

[everdrive]

>But I still visit HN and YouTube multiple times daily.

Youtube is definitely the greater evil here. Anything with an algorithmic feed and an engagement-based UI will be harmful to you. HN could be harmful in a much more mundane way, the way that some kids could get addicted to Pac-Mac. There's nothing really addicting built in, but some people are susceptible. When it comes to algorithmic feeds, everyone is susceptible.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

It's not the algorithmic feed, it's the karmic feedback hit ...

[bee_rider]

Yes, absolutely. Because it has a gamified comment ranking system. IMO anything where a thumbs up makes your comment more visible is Social Media.

[ryandrake]

This is actually a really good "bright line" distinction between something being a forum and something being "social media". On any site (forum, S.M. or otherwise), comments or articles must necessarily be ranked top-to-bottom, where top usually is the most visible. How this ranking happens often is the main driver of what the site is like.

- Chronological (either first on top or last on top): Not social media

- Site-moderator curated: Not social media

- User-voted: Social media

- Algorithmic (usually based on some opaque measurement of engagement): Social media

[slowmovintarget]

The definition of Social Media [1], as opposed to say, forums, email lists, or comment sections typically includes algorithm-driven content pushes and a social network. In that sense, while HN facilitates communication between posters, it is not what is commonly referred to as "Social Media."

So Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, BlueSky, YouTube, LinkedIn... Yes. HN, Slashdot, no. Reddit is now social media; it has both networking and algorithmic pushes now, though in it's better days was more like HN or Slashdot.

[1] https://www.britannica.com/topic/social-media

[unclad5968]

For myself, HN yes because I interact. YT, no because I rarely even like a video nevermimd comment or I teract with anyone, although I do sometimes read comments. YT is basically equivalent to TV for me, but I have shorts blocked.

[noir_lord]

No but I do consider reddit to be and yet hacker news is in essence very similar to a specific subreddit.

It's mostly the community (and moderation on HN) that sets it aside.

[kelnos]

I think the right way to frame it is that the particular format of a site doesn't necessarily dictate whether or not something is "social media". It's important to look at how people actually use the site[0], as well as whether the voting/ranking/whatever system looks more like a popularity contest or objective moderation. It usually won't be 100% of either of those, but it will certainly lean one way or the other. I think HN leans toward objective moderation much more than Reddit does, even though HN's moderation is certainly not fully objective.

[0] This use can be heavily influenced by how the owners of the site push things, e.g. HN's guidelines and in-house moderation decisions vs. Facebook's algorithmic news feed that chases user engagement above all else.

[macNchz]

I think this is a good analogy, though something I've noticed is that as reddit has taken their product direction more towards social media, it seems that it has been harder to maintain quality in smaller discussion subreddits, because popular posts get picked up and injected into non-subscribers' feeds, so the ability to have a subreddit approaching HN's level of conversation is reduced.

Increasingly it seems users have no concept of subreddits at all, and simply consume a singular home feed (I don't actually know what the new user experience of signing up for reddit on the app looks like, but this is my impression), more like the major social media platforms.

I've been using reddit for a long time and still check it, but I've become considerably less engaged as they've moved towards this kind of lowest-common-denominator slop trough feed approach.

[pbiggar]

Non corporate and non-addictive social media doesn't really count. For example, Upscrolled [1] is an ethical social media that's doesn't aim to be addictive (among other ethical aspects). I don't think it's the same as being part of the dopamine machine like on IG.

[1] https://upscrolled.com/ - fyi I work with them

[disambiguation]

Yes, mainly because of upvotes.

Back when voting systems were fairly new to the social web, there was a lot of resistance for this reason. Now its become the norm.

[collinmcnulty]

I would like to say no, but I do feel the same kind of dopamine hit from checking HN as I do other sites, and that makes me uncomfortable.

[SoftTalker]

I don't have my login cached on my phone, plus HN isn't really great on mobile, so that helps a lot. I do find myself spending too much time on it on desktop.

[neilellis]

But the toxicity levels I find to be lower - definitely not zero, but much lower than the actual social media where the toxic content is actively prioritised.

[chasing0entropy]

I petition to make the message notification, and karma count spoilered until clicked on

[kylecazar]

I don't really. I'm not on any of the other social media sites anymore (including LinkedIn, to the chagrin of many professional peers), but I remember them being very different from my experience here on HN. I choose what I want to read and engage with here, and there's almost always something interesting to me. I'm not force-fed anything.

[t-3]

It's social media, but an older form that's halfway between the forums and BBSs that used to be dominant and the modern stream-of-ads style. It's not quite as conducive to discussion as a forum with sequential threading but also not quite as detrimental to it as the more ephemeral reaction-based platforms.

[creata]

The problem for me with social media is that it triggers intense envy. People are constantly talking about their lives, and everyone's doing well but me.

This website doesn't have as much of that. It has a much larger focus on content than on people, so I can just read in peace.

It's not problematic in the same way.

[ryandrake]

> People are constantly talking about their lives, and everyone's doing well but me.

I wouldn't trust any of it. A huge amount of Social Media is phony "lifestyle porn." A lot of these things you think your "friends" are doing is totally fabricated, photoshopped, and/or exaggerated. Did you know it's fairly inexpensive to rent an hour with a private jet, parked on the ground, so you can take pictures in it and pretend to be rich for social media?

[Kiro]

No website makes me feel worse than HN on that front so big disagree on that.

[dingnuts]

If this horrible site with its intentionally addictive algorithm traps you here like it has me, you will eventually realize that's not true at all. This website has its uber successfully celebrities and hordes of glazers who appear in their wake: swillison, tptacek, Arathorn, gwern. You just have to pay attention to usernames.

I for one feel intense jealousy about these grifters. Gwern especially -- the guy got lucky buying Bitcoin early and has spent enough of his early retirement writing that he has convinced a huge number of people (especially here) that he's some kind of expert, through sheer volume of writing!

He's a nobody! fuck I hate this website and I'll leave the moment the algorithm is no longer designed to keep me trapped here.

until then, you're stuck with me

[driverdan]

If that's a problem you're experiencing consider speaking with a mental health professional. That is not normal.

[didibus]

I do yes. It's not as bad, but it definitely feeds you brain dopamine hits and quick rewards.

[bongodongobob]

No. Only if you are being completely literal. It's 100% text based, no media embedding, no direct messages, no user feeds. It's a forum. I don't think anyone considers text only forums with no bells and whistles to be social media.

[busymom0]

I don't consider HN, Reddit and YouTube to be social media because they are not "social" imo. It's more of a discussion board than social as I don't know anyone in person.

Also the lack of any pictures on HN makes it even less social imo.

[vaylian]

"social" is the most important word. I'm surprised that so many people in this thread focus on algorithms, ranking and addiction. These things can be part of social media platforms, but they are orthogonal to what social media is: A platform that is centered around the identities of its users and the relationship between users.

Hacker news is just a good old web 2.0 website.

[chasing0entropy]

Reddit has paid ads that appear as threads with auto starting videos AND posts that look like highlight replies but are actually ads.

YouTube has insidious ads and go out of their way to attack any method of circumventing them.

It is an offense to posit that ad-free original content spewing fountain that is HN in the same league as Reddit or YouTube.

[DanLol]

For me it falls under the "social news" umbrella. It's content aggregation and commentary. I am not a huge fan of short-form video content, especially if it loops or automatically queues up another video, so HN is perfect for me.

[neilellis]

If you can avoid reading too many comments I find it to be fine, I too have ditched all social media except YouTube and HN. I find YT doesn't pester me with toxic content, and HN you kind of just gotta read a few comments only :-)

[damnesian]

I don't think the comments are the problem. It's the doomscrolling. On YT, that would be shorts. Here, I guess it would be skimming thread titles and occasionally checking out the link. More convo = less of that nonstop dopamine uptake train. At least I think.

[verdverm]

Yes, absolutely

in the same way I consider forums and chat rooms a form of small social media

[alecco]

> That said, YT in particular has a tendency to draw me into endless shorts holes.

Does it matter if it's social media or not? I'm sure you could do a lot better with that wasted time and dopamine.

[bloudermilk]

Definitely wrt the dopamine. The shorts are the main issue there for me, and I’m eager to tune my unlock to get rid of those. The content I’m on there for is long-form educational and it’s the best medium/source for that.

[Kiro]

Of course. It's also the one of the most addictive ones.

[H1Supreme]

HN, to me, is unlike anything else. It has a "feed", but it feels more like a forum with one category for threads.

[nemomarx]

If you want to avoid shorts, unhook seems pretty good at disabling parts of the UI to hide things

[chairmansteve]

No. It's not manipulating you.

[INTPenis]

That is highly personal.

Some people are lonely and use the internet as a way of reaching out to other humans. And in those cases, HN comments can become your social media fix.

But if you just use it for news, keeping up, reading discussions, chiming in if you have something important to add, then no I don't consider it social media.

[Scarblac]

Yes I do, because the HN comments are a big part of why I come here.

[ACow_Adonis]

I think it depends on how one interacts with it. As far as I know it doesn't have a personalised feed and I'm seeing the same front page as everyone else. So I mainly use it to scan once or twice a day to pick out if there's anything going on in the world I need to know about.

Then for one or two threads I'll perouse the comments to see what our particular class of HN-esque people think about a topic. About once a month or a fortnight I might even post a comment. But it all has to be taken in context. Half of the time I'll close out the comments section immediately because it's clear the whole thing has gone down a tangent in not interested in hearing about. Another risk is when talking about topics that the HN crowd knows nothing about, which in my case is primarily economics where some of the takes are borderline delusional/ignorant and backed by a kind of tech worker/startup ideology.

The anti-politics thing is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand it's one of the last sites on the internet where there is comparatively little vitriol and thankfully, comparatively little populism. On the other hand, it means defacto support for a dominant ideology and compressive censorship of anything that threatens that ideology, and obviously that ideology is the one that supports tech workers, startups and venture capitalists.

I think taking all those things into account you can still get value out of it but know what you're engaging with. But like the other forms of social media since the death of forums, it's not made for serious engagement or deep thinking on a subject, and discussion can't really be anything more than temporally ephemeral.

At the very least it's borderline whereas the other forms of social media can basically be judged to be explicit write offs in my opinion.

[dmje]

It’s an addictive site, yes. But IMO it’s not social media.

For me one of the primary factors in determining the social media that I really want to avoid / does the most harm - is the primacy of the individual profile. It’s always seemed to me that the most toxic and appallingly addictive sites (X, Fb, Insta, any of the X-clones etc) are all about views, likes, re-posting, and have a user right at the centre of this.

Whereas for me, HN is about the topic, and not the individual. You are interested in a topic, you read it, you vote it up. Yes there are people profiles but they’re significantly unimportant - there’s karma but I’m not sure anyone really looks at that. People aren’t “followed”.

Controversially I sort of apply the same thinking to Reddit. Yes there are individuals and yes the profile side is a bit more visible but you generally (or at least, this is the way I use it) are interested in the topics and not the people.

Broadly, my take is that the less narcissistic something is, the better.

[julianozen]

reflect on what about social media you do not like and whether HN encourages or discourages said behavior

[deadbabe]

No it is not. Here’s why:

Hackernews is more accurately called a forum, and forums have been around way longer than social media.

The key defining aspect of a social media platform, is that the members are minting social currency and building a network. The social net worth of users comes in the form of followers and influence. The content you post on your profile is an asset, it farms for you while you sleep.

On social media, your media is socializing for you long after you’ve posted it. It exists forever, welcoming people to like, to comment, to subscribe, etc. On a forum, your post is read for a few days then never again, as people move on to newer posts. On social media, algorithms keep your content circulating to fresh eyes.

On hackernews, there are no followers or following, there is no network being built. Your comments are not assets, they are ephemeral ideas that quickly dissolve and are never read beyond the first few days they exist. People’s reputation depends on their good name, and most people will not even remember the vast amount of people they talk to in the comments. Often people don’t even look at usernames. There is a karma system, but it is of limited value in terms of influence, it is used more as a sorting mechanism for good posts within comment sections.

On true social media networks, your profile stats are like a credit score. You can post stuff and if you’re a big shot you instantly collect the attention of a vast number of people and easily pick up new momentum.

On HN, you have to fight for attention, and it doesn’t matter if you are a long time user or a brand new noob, you will fight just as hard. There is no long term reward for writing good comments, only momentary glory. This means there is little incentive to chase trends. If you miss a trend, no one will notice or care, and you gain nothing by following the trend. A key aspect of being socially active is that you have some awareness of societal trends and are able to keep up with them, it shows you are conforming to the larger conversation in society and are relatable. This is what social media is about.

So the takeaway is, just because you are socializing on a site, does not mean it is social media.

But, you can still be manipulated even on a forum. Look at the insane cargo cult around Rust that formed here on hackernews a few years back. You can even be manipulated into becoming enraged, but at least because there is little to no monetary gain from writing anonymous comments on the internet, it is the purest form of trolling.

[uvaursi]

Yes.

People have quit HN. Very valuable people who found the shift in community was distasteful and appalling.

I don’t consider YT social media myself because there’s nothing social about binging Sam Ben-Yaakov videos.