alt Hacker NewsI 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.
Replies
chasing0entropy • yesterday at 9:15 PM
Reddit has paid ads that appear as threads with auto starting videos AND posts that look like highlight replies but are actually ads.
YouTube has insidious ads and go out of their way to attack any method of circumventing them.
It is an offense to posit that ad-free original content spewing fountain that is HN in the same league as Reddit or YouTube.
"social" is the most important word. I'm surprised that so many people in this thread focus on algorithms, ranking and addiction. These things can be part of social media platforms, but they are orthogonal to what social media is: A platform that is centered around the identities of its users and the relationship between users.
Hacker news is just a good old web 2.0 website.