Scary stuff. I don't have social media, but from time to time I would create and delete Facebook/Twitter/Instagram accounts. Never posted anything. Just used them for auth/developer/Marketplace...etc. But I don't know all the logins I used in the past... So if I fail to provide a login to an empty profile, do I get permabanned from the US?
HN is social media. Messenger apps are almost certainly social media. GitHub or similar platforms might be social media. There might be some people out there without any social media accounts, but they wouldn't be able to post about it on the internet.
Other than that, your example of using temporary accounts for some secondary platform functionality is yet another reason why this policy is terrible.
Reddit absolutely counts as social media they want, it's likely much more useful to them than your facebook account since people post a lot more interesting stuff on reddit vs a facebook account. Your comments on this thread are more interesting to dictators than your dog photos on facebook.
There are no features on HN to "connect" to others. The discussions and content of HN could be 100% the same even if all usernames and profiles were hidden. So I'm not sure a definition of social media could possibly include a site where the people are disconnected from the content.
