You couldn’t create anything resembling the Instagram experience on any of those services, let alone using some of your other suggestion like email. If the only thing you think a substitute service requires is a way to send images, then you could replace Instagram with the postal service by that standard.

The most absurd part of this argument is that discord, WhatsApp, messenger, etc… are all also social media platforms. This is by far the silliest “well actually” I’ve ever seen on HN.

Discord is a social media platform. And you absolutely could. I’ve been in quite a few servers where channels were used as a dumping ground for whatever people were doing at a time and felt like showing off. It’s an extreme example, but one that works because ultimately Instagram’s ability to display this information is no different than anything else’s. You simply believe Instagram is some perfect solution that cannot be replicated and refuse to understand the basic definition of a social network.

You _could_ use email as an Insta replacement as well. But the suggestion that they deliver the same service or experience is rather contrived.

But that’s really besides the point, because as you said, they’re all social media platforms, and it’s social media when somebody posts content on them to their large public audience, and it’s social media when I post to my small audience of friends. It’s the suggestion that one of those scenarios is social media and the other isn’t that’s completely illogical.

> You couldn’t create anything resembling the Instagram experience

I actually 100% agree with you here, but assuredly not in the way you meant it.

What it's NOT is that you couldn't replicate a simple media sharing experience between a tight nit group of friends. That's demonstrably false.

> This is by far the silliest “well actually” I’ve ever seen on HN.

No, it's... something else. Again, you're being extremely defensive when someone points out simple facts. Iykyk.