this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2025
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[–] mechoman444@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

All you're doing now is adding a modifier to suit your needs, shaping it into the definition of social media. By your logic, any website that hosts media and allows correspondence qualifies as social media. The fact that content is created by journalists (or who ever) rather than the public makes no difference under this definition.

Take ESPN.com, for example—it's not comparable to platforms like Facebook or Reddit. Yet, it hosts media and provides a slight ability to correspond. Does that make it social media? Similarly, people watching a news broadcast on cable television and then discussing it over the phone wouldn’t turn cable TV into social media, even though discussion occurs. It’s simply not defined that way.

My contention is this: a website having media and a comment section doesn’t automatically qualify it as social media. Whether it operates as a public or private forum is irrelevant.

As for my point about anonymity, it’s a critical distinction between this platform and others like Facebook and Instagram. That distinction is relevant because it highlights a key difference in how these platforms function.

More importantly, I am making a personal statement: I do not consider Lemmy or Reddit to be social media. I understand they are categorized as such, but I am stating my disagreement with that classification.