Same. I only find Reddit tolerable because of Apollo. The official Reddit app pales in comparison.

I hope they can come to some sort of agreement or find a way to acquihire the Apollo developer (though that might kill the app with crappy features as well).

I've always just used the web, is there some reason to use an app for it? I liked it as a place to look for people talking about things I might want to buy. I'm sure it is full of fake comments, but the ones that make verifiable claims for or against are useful.

> is there some reason to use an app for it?

Yes, the obstructive popup when you visit reddit on a mobile browser to force you into installing the app. Other than that only if you want to do more than read.

It makes me laugh that reddit's mobile site will let you view NSFW content but wont let you go to the contents of a NSFW post without downloading the app or signing in.

Reddits main function as a porn facilitator will really hamper its desire to make lots of money as a publicly-traded business.

My understanding is they're actively working to minimise NSFW communities in lede to the IPO.

It’s funny they’re still pushing it after Tumblr, and also considering 5ch.net always had the NSFW part in a different domain(not subdomain). It’s as if everyone knows and some always knew…

The NSFW content feels like its just ads for OnlyFans accounts at this point. The NSFW subs suffer from the fate that all the other subs do, Reddit is too large at this point to cultivate any real, organic community.

My experience is that subs subdivide themselves at some size to become fractaly specialized. Like dnd 5 optimizers, dnd5 powergamers, dnd5 roleplayers, and when those get too big, dnd5 players that like to optimize wizards in the ravenloft setting while listening to lo-fi. There is an obligatory xkcd but I can't be bothered.

they're starting to featurewall more actively

I've used RES + web + adblockers forever. Any app i've looked at is usually more cluttered than that.

Another happy Apollo user here. Reddit is painful without it.

Serious question and I don't mean anything negative - Do you consider HN to be social media?

Using it as just a news source seems really valid.

And it feels different from other social media platforms because of the focus on full discussions. But surely this still counts as social media?

Genuinely asking because I see you made your account just to post this comment - why did you do that? It's not a bad thing (I'm here too), I'm just curious why you felt it was important to do?

I think social media is a vague term that has lost its original meaning, whatever that was. [0]

Especially with modern tech, very few pieces of technology act as a single purpose; my phone can be just a phone, just a camera, just a chat application, or any combination of the above. Whether it's a toy or a work tool or a social media device changes depending on how its being used.

HackerNews is the same, in that you can just use it as a link aggregator, maybe you like it as a "classic" forum, maybe you use it for advertising. (HN-ready articles that are basically advertisements are quite common and popular even)

I think before anyone can really answer if something is social media or not, it needs to be better defined what it actually encompasses now as oppose to when the term was coined. Like, is a Glade AirFreshner a social media device just because you can tweet from it?

0 - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8064945/pdf/cyb... I guess this says it originated in 1990? But it doesn't seem well defined.

Probably any media aggregator where you can submit content and vote on it qualifies as social media. So yes, HN is social media, and has some of the negatives that social media engenders (e.g. outrage-driven comments, low-quality discussion, people optimizing their lives around accruing pointless karma).

But, without a social graph, I wouldn't call it a social network, so it does not suffer a lot of the problems social networks have (e.g. echo chambers, ostracizing members, showing off, influencers, and many others).

Social media has problems, social networks have problems, and social media which leverages a social graph has a whole different class of problems. Ironically, the relative primitiveness of HN protects it from at least some of the worst elements of the internet.

I've noticed that everything that allows interaction between users is social media for the younger generation. They have no notion of forum, chat app or... social media organized like facebook or tiktok.

Social media usually let you subscribe to specific users/groups, whether via friend requests or something else. The result is a network of users who follow each other. HN on the other hand doesn't feel more "social" to me than any oldschool forum. The focus is on content and usernames only exist to tell them apart.

Yes I would, but not in the most common sense. Basically, I would categorize any internet forum or bulletin board a social media. At least if you go by some kind of identity and that identity persists. As opposed to traditional media, which was broadcast only (through airwaves or paper).

I think the proper contrast isn’t “airwaves or paper” vs “internet” but “one-to-many” vs “many-to-many”. The internet is a key enabling technology for many-to-many mass media, but a top-down one-way editorial-content website is as much traditional media as a newspaper.

I don’t consider HN a social network anymore than I consider my local news website (which also has comments) to be social media.

isn't that a website utilizing features of web2.0? seems like there is a bit of fuzziness when separating socials from web2.0. not really sure why

Yes. But the question was about social media not web2.0. Unrelated topics.

Leaving comments on a website is what I was referring to. The GGP commented that news sites allow comments, which I stated was a web2.0 feature that does not make the site using it a social media site which supports the original comment's sentiment as well. hopefully that clears up your confusion

Ah, ok. Thanks.

I think the main argument is to avoid Social Media that comes along with the baggage of the big platforms. I think the downsides to HN are so much smaller and few, that it's easy for me to consider "forum-like" social activity completely separate from typical Social Media.

No. It is not social media. Neither is Reddit. Social media is any platform that can be used to track you down to send you an invite to your high school reunion. That is, it is not anonymous. Social media is social - real people interacting with each other in a non anonymous manner. I have no proof that anyone on here, or Reddit, is not a bot except for me.

> Do you consider HN to be social media?

I think this site will get a flood of new users from Reddit once the axe drops. I think this will cause the quality of discussions to go down.

I don't think so, this site is extremely slow compared to any other social media (slow as in not much content). I honestly wouldn't be shocked if hn had a slightly larger audience compared to fark.

I suppose time will tell.

It's already been happening for years.

Just out of curiosity, what do you plan to use for news/entertainment instead? I don't use Facebook, and generally alternate between HN and Reddit whenever I need a break from work and don't know any other good options.