Cuz the comments throught Lemmy/Piefed seems to indicate that literally every user on here is a FOSS/Dencentralization Purist and has 100% abandoned mainstream platforms.
I wonder if this is actually true or just a small minority of users being overrepresented.
Unless you count old Reddit as “mainstream”, I never did.
Even if I have to deal with pissed-off people because I “still didn’t join them on facebook”.
my favorite is people wnat you to join them on some app. whatsapp, signal, etc. and you say you don’t use apps and they ask you why you are such a dick.
because i use my phone as a phone dude.
I actually quit a volunter org because they demaded we all have slack on our phones so we could ‘be available to cover for each other’. And I just flat out refused and they all got super upset with me, so I just quit. basically gen z people had joined and they refuse to use phone calls or texts to communicate. everything is slack/discord or some other group chat app.
The salt is high on ppl using third option apps. I have sms and if that won’t work I guess we won’t talk.
Just YouTube, but I only watch and don’t comment or use it as social media.
Only YouTube.
I was pretty addicted to Reddit for a while, but eventually I got banned for basically no reason and that was enough to get me to almost entirely stop checking it.
I don’t think YouTube counts as social media. Also, you can disable ads, comments and shorts, it feels so much better
social media
noun
Interactive forms of media that allow users to interact with and publish to each other, generally by means of the Internet.
I think it counts
So anything with a comments section? That would make pornhub and animekai “social medias” too LMAO
unless you’re actively posting and commenting and interacting on youtube, you aren’t though.
some of us just watch videos. I never had an account either until I was forced to get one due to them blocking so many vids from being viewed without signing in.
just like i sometimes read twitter comments, but i don’t have a twitter account and i don’t interact it, they just sometimes come up as links in stories i’m reading. same with tiktok or IG videos/images. I see it mostly through other websites that are using them as sources.
that’s very different than most people who are using it to as a means of socialization. I don’t even regard reddit/lemmy or internet comments as socialization. some people do. i have never have a ‘reddit friend’ even though I used teh site for over a decade. to me it was just shit on the internet that was fun to comment about.
Why would YouTube not count as social media?
Pre-rebuttal in case you go in this direction: Being a social media platform and being a video sharing platform are not mutually exclusive.
Another even simpler point I haven’t seen anyone else mention yet is that social media is historically associated with being used to socially interact with friends and family, either people you know irl or closely-knit online groups you treat as legitimate personal relationships.
Though I suppose Twitter can be an exception to this, but anyone who remembers how Twitter started out knows that it was never intended to be that way lol (now that government and judicial agencies use it as a defacto form of official press release ontop of everything else)
If the question is “why not”, I think a good reasoning is simply because it broadens the categorization to the point where the term begins to lose all meaning. Different websites inherently have different forms of structure for interaction.
The way you behave on Instagram, Facebook, tumblr, and Twitter all feel fundamentally different from the way you behave on forums and video sites. People on Lemmy don’t “reblog” stuff, people don’t send each other friend requests on Youtube. It redefines the core dynamic.
On Youtube, the dominating theme is channels and parasocial relationships, more similar (but not exactly the same) to an audience’s relationship with traditional media like Film and Television and their responses to the various actors/artists/celebrities therein rather than a 1:1 reciprocal relationship. Sure, there are fan groups, which gets into an interesting subset where you can begin to socially interact with each other, but these groups often live in outside spaces (such as tumblr). Hence the point I’m trying to make.
Even classifying Lemmy and Reddit as “social medias” feels like a stretch. I mean yes, in a technical sense we’re all “socializing” with each other in this moment and having (mostly) genuine conversations. But for the vast majority of it, I would say:
It’s just TV, there’s nothing social about it for many people
Like Netflix with a different library
Would you consider tiktok to be social media, then?
Tiktok is the definition of social media imo. You respond directly to each other with videos that reveal who you are in real life. It’s almost aggressively social lol, like neighbors yelling at each other inside of the same apartment building, even if you live on opposite ends of the continent.
But that’s not how most people actually use it
yeah because it’s mostly talking heads and the tik tok videos are meant to be replied to by other videos.
a lot of youtube isn’t like that. it’s just videos.
do some people use youtube as a social platform? yes. like the massive genre of talking heads and ‘reaction’ videos.
I don’t think many people use tiktok like that. Most people are just commenting, or lurking. It’s functionally pretty similar to how YouTube is used for the average person.
I remember there was actually a time (probably way back in the late 2000s) where youtube used to have a little “video reply” feature, and they would nest the replies beneath the video in a little banner! I miss those days…
That’s a way to use it (and the one I prefer) but it’s still media with social components, ergo social media.
That’s too broad.
There’s a pretty general consensus that it counts, and it makes good sense from a media literacy point of view to treat it as such.
I lurk on Reddit but no longer have an active account.
Nothing else
Being honest? Fuck no. Well, except for Facebook Marketplace. I try Craigslist first but all the good shit (and stupid people… holy fucking stupid people) are on Marketplace. Which means I technically have a FB account. I did venture down the feed a while back and the amount of AI slop had me noping out faster than a crab at a seagull convention. How anyone tolerates that shit is beyond me.
The stupidity in Facebook boggles me. Where are these people coming from?
This is literally my only social.media. i have a discord but mainly use it for tech forums. I ditched meta completely a couple.years ago ad it has been one of the best decisions ive ever made. I did it when i was getting sober because i recognized that it was an addiction and hated the way it made me feel. Never had a shitter or anything. I technically have a youtube but i only use it for posting the occassional video for joy.
youtube and discord but only because i cant live without those (youtube for youtubers and updates, discord for friends)
I have FB for marketplace a couple times a year, I don’t install the app unless I’m buying something.
I watch a LOT of educational YouTube, and some tech news on there, using GrayJay.
Otherwise, this is it.
Used to have insta years ago.
I guess I technically have Marco Polo, but it’s literally my immediate family only 🤷♂️ and that’s more chat app than social media.
Edit: oh and discord for the couple of friends who use it. Plus I’m on a couple of servers for my hobbies, very specific, I hardly look at them unless I’m active in a given hobby at that moment.
I Just got my second Ban from Reddit in two weeks for mentioning Zionism in an inoccuous way.
Reddit has been captured.
Captured since at least 2015. More likely Reddit was an op from the beginning since /u/maxwellhill was Ghislane.
YouTube and discord if you can call those social media and Tumblr if you can call that mainstream.
I keep trying to block reddit, but half of the good practical advice and troubleshooting help is trapped there.
If anybody has a giant directory of active messageboards, I’m all ears.
I still have a Facebook account, but I refuse to even look at my feed. I don’t really want to know what most of my family is up to, however Marketplace, sadly, is better than Craigslist ever was.
Still have my old YouTube account, but I rarely look at it.
No Gram/Twitter/LinkedIn Permabanned from the mainstream link aggregator what feels like forever ago
Don’t remember my Tumblr login
This is it for me.
Must feel liberating ❤️
No, only this.
I do not use mainstream social media. Haven’t in years.
We asked in our instance census about use of lemmy-like platforms (reddit, hacker news) and most people said they still used them in some respect. Only 7 our of 49 who answered this question said they never use them, over half use them equally or more than Fediverse alternatives.
Personally I use Facebook messenger, well I normally use Beeper because I don’t have facebook on my phone but I still use the platform to connect with people. And video call on my laptop from time to time.
