Over in ~podcasts, there's a good post from @sebastix linking to a Cal Newport podcast talking about why creatives should get off social media. Newport's been against social media for a while, and makes some great points. The comments so far are generally in agreement.
Meanwhile, @cryotosensei posted in ~meta on Stacker News and parenting in which he notes that in a previous post, the advice he'd received included: Some Stackers suggested that since I was being put through the fire, I should reduce the amount of time I spend on social media, including Stacker News.
(Reader, he did not take that advice, at least in regard to SN, and I think we're all better off for it.)
Of course, no one in that first post is snarking at SN. But it's unquestionably social media. The important thing is that it's a good social media site.
As some of you know, I'm An Old. I've been online in some capacity since 1986. And I've seen a lot of social media. I'm still on mailing lists/listservs1 I was on back then, I was on Usenet back when it was useful, was on Livejournal and Flickr and tried Myspace and a zillion other things before Facebook/Twitter came to dominate (of course "microblogging" is simply a subset of "social media"2). And SN is a forum where people have identities/aliases, interact with each other, and post content. Hell, they can even follow other users (or mute them).
That's social media, folks. The site we usually compare ourselves to positively (something with "Red" in it) is unquestionably social media, and even the site SN's name brings to mind fits into that bin.
(As an aside, Nostr is social media and also clearly in the same microblogging space as Twitter/FB.)
I definitely think there's a difference between doomscrolling social media (starting with Tumblr, but now clearly a part of FB/Twitter/Tiktok), and sites like SN that all you to consume how you want to. There's probably an argument that the comparative echo chamber helps make this place better as well, although I think that's one that's probably some strands to untangle, since there are lots of echo chamber sites that are awful (Gab), and awful sites that aren't echo chambers (Twitter). And I think there's potential for stagnation at a certain point.
I'd also guess that the V2V/Zapping here is a huge factor; spamming has an actual cost, and while commenting is cheap (fractions of a penny), it's still a small barrier.
I'm sure there are other factors. The tech in general is really good, and it can't be understated how much that helps. The lack of ads and algorithms means that it can't go through the enshittification that other sites do. Being open-source has to help.
So yeah, I'm not off social media because I'm on Stacker News3. I just spend my social media time on a good site.
Footnotes
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If you don't know what a listserv is, fix that. One of them is crucial to Bitcoin history. ↩
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"Microblogging" itself has shifted in meaning, as Twitter now lets people write 10000 work screeds if they give Elon the right amount of money. ↩
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And Nostr. And one or two other sites. ↩