Lemmy is a forum, not social media. It has none of the hallmarks of social media, and is only alike in the fact that you talk to other people, which is literally the entire point of the internet in the first place.

Edit: I decided to write this up since I argue this all the time.

Short argument for those that don't care and just want to argue:

• governments want to restrict your rights
• what better way to do so than using a definition that most people think they understand, but actually covers every website in existence

Long argument:

Forums have existed long before social media. Social media derived from social networking, sites like SixDegrees.com, MySpace, AOL, Facebook, etc. An example of a pure social networking site is LinkedIn. The elements that make it social networking:

• real names
• networking with people you know
• main purpose is "keeping in touch" with friends and acquaintances

Social media spread from social networking. People realized they could talk on a global scale rather than just with their friends and acquaintances. Twitter popped up. Most people still used their real names, but many used anonymous tags. It was still predominantly random topics to 'keep in touch' but with followers rather than acquaintances. Then Instagram. Still random topics, purpose is still to connect with others, except now it's sharing things on a wider scale.

Notice how none of these things are things you do on a forum. You use anonymous usernames and the main purpose is talking about a shared topic, getting help, etc. not random daily posts, checkins etc. Forums are targeted discussions. You don't follow other users, you don't know them personally (knowing them personally is not the reason for being on the platform), you have no network graph, and they have existed for decades without being breeding grounds for the terrible things that have emerged from social media sites where fake news can spread like wildfire.

What does this all lead to? Well imagine that society decides that soda is bad and needs to be regulated (already happened in many countries). So the government decides that they're going to ban children from drinking soda. Yay! Oh wait, but the government has decided that soda actually is "any drink with flavoring and/or bubbles in it". Oh dang. You just banned every drink on the planet, yet citizens think that children have only been banned from drinking soda. Nope. No more water, milk, tea, coffee, literally nothing is drinkable by children anymore.

That's what's happening with social media. Social media has become such a broad term, that it covers every website (essentially) on the planet.

Here's the Australian Age Restriction law definition of 'social media':

• The sole purpose, or a significant purpose, of the service is to enable online social interaction between two or more end-users.
• The service allows end-users to link to, or interact with, some or all of the other end-users.
• The service allows end-users to post material on the service.
• The service has a 'recommender feature' and/or 'logged in feature' as defined in the Rules.
• Material on the service is accessible to, or delivered to, end-users in Australia.

This means that Stack Overflow, a help forum for software developers, is Social Media. This definition includes News websites that have comment sections (all of them). This definition includes any website where you can talk to another human being, for example a car forum or a microcontroller forum. This definition literally includes Amazon for fucks sake. What would Amazon be without customer reviews? Well according to this definition they wouldn't be Social Media.

You might say "those types of sites don't have recommender or logged in features", well the "'recommender feature' and/or 'logged in feature'" rule is doing a hell of a lot of lifting here, let's look at what it has to say:

 (1) For the purposes of paragraph 63C(1)(a)(iv) of the Act, it is a condition that the service has either or both of:

 (a) a recommender feature;

 (b) a logged‑in feature.

Recommender feature

 (2) A service has a recommender feature if the service can:

 (a) select material by reference to any information that the service has associated with an end‑user’s account; and

 (b) display that material to the end‑user while the end‑user is using the service.

Logged‑in features

 (3) A service has a logged‑in feature if the service:

 (a) has one or more of the following features:

 (i) an endless‑feed feature;

 (ii) a feedback feature; or

 (iii) a time‑limited feature; and

 (b) does not enable an end‑user to access, or be exposed to, at least one such feature unless the end‑user is using the service with an account.

 (4) A service has an endless‑feed feature if the service can display material to an end‑user:

 (a) in a feed of material that has no end‑point; or

 (b) in a feed of material that has an end‑point, but to which additional material is added:

 (i) when that end‑point is reached; or

 (ii) at time intervals; or

 (iii) in response to the end‑user’s input.

 (5) A service has a feedback feature if the service can display information to an end‑user about:

 (a) the extent to which other end‑users have viewed or otherwise engaged with material posted by the end‑user on the service; or

 (b) the extent to which other end‑users have opted to receive notifications about the end‑user’s account or material posted by the end‑user on the service.

 (6) A service has a time‑limited feature if the service enables an end‑user to view material that is available to be viewed on the service only within a limited period after it has been posted.

Alright so 2(a), literally just means showing anything to a user based on history. So if you turn on the setting to hide read posts on Lemmy then Lemmy immediately would apply here.

On news sites they use cookies to track you so you don't even need to be logged in for this to happen, and there's no rule here stating that it has to be end-user created material so all news sites with comment sections would meet this requirement if they do anything with a cookie or geo location or anything like that.

For the car forum example you might say "forums don't really track things", well that's where you get into the "Logged-in features" section, 3(a)(i); an endless‑feed feature. 3(b) states "does not enable an end‑user to access, or be exposed to, at least one such feature unless the end‑user is using the service with an account." well that's posting, so any forum automatically meets that, so what is an endless feed?

 (4) A service has an endless‑feed feature if the service can display material to an end‑user:  (b) in a feed of material that has an end‑point, but to which additional material is added:  (iii) in response to the end‑user’s input.

great. So clicking the next button at the bottom of the forum page to go to the next page counts as an "endless feed".

Australia is a fantastic example of people thinking the government is enacting one law when in reality they are enacting a law that will regulate every part of society. Australia is moving slowly to not alarm people, but the law does affect these other websites, they just don't realize it yet.

To be clear, there is no way to regulate the social media that people think is bad versus any other social media, according to these random definitions. If you see someone trying to regulate social media, or someone stating that social media applies to forums, you should scream and yell and make as much noise as possible, because all they are trying to do is regulate the entire internet to remove your speech.

I've been warning about this for years and everything I've warned about is already coming true. As long as people continue to claim that Reddit and Lemmy are social media the problem will only get worse. The problem isn't talking to others online. It's these massive corporations that use algorithms to manipulate you. The commonality here isn't "talking to people". It's $$$.