> It creates a simulacrum of the world which does not correspond to the tangible reality I see around me.

5–10 years ago I would have agreed: “The real world is so different from the terminally-online space.” But the terminally-online space has seeped into real life all over the world. For example, I have traveled the developing world a lot in the last two years, and it’s unbelievable how many young men want to talk to me about Andrew Tate and related things when they see I’m a man from the West. Even in countries with shaky English skills, certain online memes are big.

Or take when I bikepacked a remote route down Mexico that is popular with Americans: in spite of this route being largely a two-month break from being always online, the conversations when those American cyclists met up were often indistinguishable from the social or political outrage that engagement-maximizing platforms stoke. Even if you disconnect, you can’t repair the damage.

My recent experience with social media has been very different. These days I'm mostly active on the Fediverse, and in contrast to the News, my timeline doesn’t feel like a model of the world at all. All I see are little snippets. Many individuals are sharing their feelings, creations, thoughts, or seeking advice. The posts don’t feel like a collage meant to capture the state of society as a whole, but rather as windows into different people’s lives.

I don’t think that’s how everyone feels on the Fediverse; browsing the federated timeline or viewing the public posts on some large instance doesn’t feel much different from the other big sites. But your own experience on your personal timeline is truly your own, and you decide what to make of it. I keep seeing personal snippets because I choose to follow people who post a lot of personal snippets that I’m interested in seeing. I get a relatively low amount of global politics and polarising topics because I seldom follow people who talk about those a lot. I quite literally get what I ask for—no less and no more.

At the end of the day, I think the key is understanding your network and adjusting your expectations. Following someone means you’ll be seeing their posts. So if you don’t want someone’s posts on your timeline, for whatever reason, just don’t follow them. Problem solved, easy as. (Then again, I imagine getting to see only the content you want to see might be more difficult on the more corporate networks, so if that’s the case, you might need a better social network.)

… and perhaps I should add that seeing only what you want to see won’t help you avoiding a simplified view of the world if such a view ultimately is what you want to see. Being in charge of your social experience is only useful if you're in charge of yourself. If you're not, you might need to change that before any social network, no matter how user-friendly, will be able to benefit you.

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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

>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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 :-)

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.

Yes, absolutely

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

> 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.

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

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

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

No. It's not manipulating you.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Yeah. I will say, the best place to start is just deactivate one for 30 days and see whether you miss it.

It turns out I didn't actually like any of these apps. If I did, they wouldn't need to play all these dumb games to keep me engaged.

I have been off social media completely since 2016. Only have a Facebook left for family and the occasional marketplace browse. When I do check it I only log in via browser and spend maybe 5-10 minutes on the site. I posted a few times that people should contact me via email if they want to chat though so far no one has taken up my offer.

These things should free up your schedule :)

At least you can still vember, right? What's that? Oh...

I disagree. While smaller networks are a good thing for the social media landscape, ultimately people should go seek other activities where socializing is a secondary benefit. Rather than spending time on a social network. If we take a month to refocus on non-social-first activity we will be healthier 1000000x as communities.

Lemmy is great btw. I started putting “lemmy” instead of “reddit” in my searches and it often works.

You may clear the watch history once in a while to reset.

I came here to ask if there is some way of fixing this. I'm guessing not.

Youtube lately seems particularly bad in terms of showing lots of "shorts" all over when I have zero interest in watching them, but also suggested videos seem somehow aggressively chosen. I'm not sure how to describe that, but that's what it feels like to me.

Make sure to use your own domain.

there's some good options out there, good luck! I'm a happy Fastmail user.

Yes. “Socials” has been functionally interchangeable, especially in written form, for probably 2+ years now, in my experience.

this might be a generational thing or a geographic thing, my nieces and nephews use the word "socials" while I always use "social media".

Not where I live if you're older than middle school age

Yes

You made a right decision; The big-world social platforms are doomed to fail, as they have quadratic scaling costs. I am a big proponent of "curation over moderation".

I am working on Mikoto Platforms, which is basically designed to be somewhere between Discord and Notion, but open source + decentralized. There is no global feed; in fact, some users thought it was a bug that it took you to such an empty screen when you first started it. Platforms are what you make of it.

How can you do that in the apps? Or do you just do it for the websites and not install the apps in the first place?