The saying goes if you’re not the customer, you’re the product. Now, you’re both. Every big social media app is testing subscriptions. It's a business model that comes with a perverse incentive. Just like airlines, if you make life worse, more people will pay.
  • Rikudou_SageEnglish
    33•1 year ago

    I personally never counted Reddit and am not counting Lemmy as a social media. Both Reddit and Lemmy are just a really huge forum which contains many subforums.

    • MxM111
      26•1 year ago

      Forums are social media though. Social interaction, community building, content sharing. All is there. Being anonymous does not have much impact on that.

      • @[email protected]English
        9•1 year ago

        True, but I think the big difference is that social media in the way of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc are tied to your identity IRL and include people that you actually know IRL, therefore are almost an extension of your life, whereas lemmy, reddit, and other iterest-specific forums have to option of decoupling from real life.

        • MxM111
          9•1 year ago

          Interesting point. However, I think there are many anonymous account on Twitter, for example. Yet it is no different from others.

      • @[email protected]English
        3•1 year ago

        By that definition Social Media was invented in the 80s with the BBS (so pre-internet, using modems).

        • MxM111
          1•1 year ago

          Yep. They just did not call it like that back then.

      • @derpgonEnglish
        1•1 year ago

        Everything is everything if you squint enough. You have to look past the meaning of the words and look at the context - social media is usually considered to be FB, Insta, TikTok, Xitter.

        • MxM111
          0•1 year ago

          Ask ChatGPT if Reddit is a social media. It will give you answer “yes”, while noting features that are different from FB. ChatGPT is a good way to judge what is “usually” considered as this or that.

          • @derpgonEnglish
            1•1 year ago

            In global context, maybe. In this thread, not quite. I do not consider ChatGPT to be objective or that it understands context of an external source.

      • @[email protected]English
        0•1 year ago

        You’re missing the point for pedantry. Call it what you want, lemmy is a helluva lot different than Facebook in many ways and we all know this.

    • @[email protected]English
      2•1 year ago

      This is how I see it as well. Though Reddit ws certainly trying to become social medium I feel - which was one of the reasons that helped me leave

      • ericEnglish
        11•1 year ago

        No, Reddit was always considered social media despite how you or most people see it. Some social media managers have had Reddit in their job description for over ten years. I know because I hired some as early as 2010.

        Social media did not start with Facebook like most people assume. Facebook is simply what brought social media into the mainstream. Usenet and forums are a form of social media that many of us old nerds have been using since the 90s.

        • @[email protected]English
          -2•1 year ago

          I think a good destiction would be social network and socical media. Media is about celeberty and making money. Network is about conections

          • ericEnglish
            2•1 year ago

            I completely disagree with your definition of “media.” There is definitely plenty of media that isn’t about celebrity, and there is also non-profit media. Media actually refers to communication to the masses. A social network is simply one form of social media.