Re:AI-generated videos to maximally drive a target brain region
by krapp on Friday July 10, 2026 @08:58AM
(#48859282)
Youtube is very obviously social media. It is a platform that serves algorithmically sorted third party content based on user preferences and a network of accounts that a user follows, and it allows communication between users through comments. It has communities. It has memes. It is certainly addictive in all of the ways social media can be.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Re:AI-generated videos to maximally drive a target brain region
by bcjdjsndon on Sunday July 12, 2026 @06:40AM
(#48880015)
Forums are social media. Irc is social media. BBS is social media. They all qualify under your definition.
Re:AI-generated videos to maximally drive a target brain region
by krapp on Sunday July 12, 2026 @07:36AM
(#48880306)
Neither IRC nor BBS* use algorithms to create feeds of third party content based on user preference, history and a network of subscribed accounts, but Youtube does. Forums can count, depending on their implementation - I don't think many people would argue that Reddit is social media, but it definitely suggests related content.
More to the point, "social media" is not as strictly defined as many people on HN want it to be, because social media features have crept into numerous platforms and applications over the years, so it really can be subjective.
* maybe some have, IDK.
Re:AI-generated videos to maximally drive a target brain region
by bcjdjsndon on Monday July 13, 2026 @02:29PM
(#48896761)
> Neither IRC nor BBS* use algorithms to create feeds of third party content based on user preference,
Both bbs and irc had top user features that encouraged users to post, bbs certainly had third party content sorted and presented to the user by algorithm.
The reason the definition is so vague is because it's largely driven by parental hysteria and can be ignored as such