You are right. According to the definition of social media, Lemmy is social media. However, “social media” would by definition fit any kind of digital communication media. A forum, or a blog, or an IRC channel are also, by definition, social media.
I would argue that the social media has a distinct association with Facebook, Instagram and the diverse spawns of those, and by association doesn’t fit anything else. At best, we simply lack a different term, which splits “old-school” stuff like forums and blogs. I view lemmy more like a forum. You have categories, and users can go into categories to start discussions. You don’t follow anyone. People also don’t create and post their own content, but rather seek discussions or share other stuff from the internet. Your goal is not reach, follow count or like count.
It is social media, but it’s definitely nothing like Facebook.
We simply lack a better term.
You are right. According to the definition of social media, Lemmy is social media. However, “social media” would by definition fit any kind of digital communication media. A forum, or a blog, or an IRC channel are also, by definition, social media.
I would argue that the social media has a distinct association with Facebook, Instagram and the diverse spawns of those, and by association doesn’t fit anything else. At best, we simply lack a different term, which splits “old-school” stuff like forums and blogs. I view lemmy more like a forum. You have categories, and users can go into categories to start discussions. You don’t follow anyone. People also don’t create and post their own content, but rather seek discussions or share other stuff from the internet. Your goal is not reach, follow count or like count.
It is social media, but it’s definitely nothing like Facebook. We simply lack a better term.
I would definitely call a forum or IRC channel social media.
I wouldn’t consider blogs social media unless they had a very active comments section.
Media is more audio, video, image. Which fits social media.
Most forums and blogs are text-based or primary text. There is no blog sharing only images/videos/audio as posts. Also no such forum.
That would be my key differentiation - forums and IRC is social, but not really media.
Printed media is definately media, and so are blogs. The social part of it is how people can interact with it.