This is absolutely social media. And like all addicts, people here loudly proclaim that it's less toxic.

Whether or not is it indeed less toxic is up for debate.

It's highly censored.

And it has the little Righthink number in the corner that goes up when you make Righthink.

Maybe. But that Righthink number has also reminded me when I am being too combative (trollish) online.

It's also fun to throw caution to the wind with a "fuck it" and just let your comment fade away after having ranted at the clouds.

> isn't HN more like professional news/discussion place?

I see enough racist and misogynist comments here to know that isn't true. And that's not even considering the low-knowledge comments offered up as expertise.

I long for the days of a Slashdot where you could filter out anyone with a UID greater than 200K or so, and it'd be nothing but 20yr experts in IT dropping rugged after rugged of tremendously insightful analysis. (Granted there was also plenty of GNAA frist psot stuff.)

>I long for the days of a Slashdot where you could filter out anyone with a UID greater than 200K or so, and it'd be nothing but 20yr experts in IT dropping rugged after rugged of tremendously insightful analysis.

If you had a similar filter here it'd likely have the the opposite effect.

What:s the difference between reddit and HN beyond the form?

It seems to be obviously social media to me

The lack of subreddits is a big difference because it inhibits users coagulating into subgroups. Reddit also allows people to be banned from subreddits by subreddit owners/mods which leads to groupthink more.

HN is one large subreddit with it's own groupthink.

The content is also different. Reddit uses AI agents to populate feeds to generate user engagement.

The main difference is no personalized algorithm ranking content to increase engagement.

The algorithm has consumed reels/shorts/tiktok/insta. Being extremely inflammatory is rewarded there.

Algorithms don't define social medias, it's just the latest iteration from the main ones.

Is BeReal not a social media because there's no algorithmic feed?

HN is definitely social media, even if it isn't explicitly labeled as such. Ostensibly Instagram is just a photo sharing site, but we all know it is social media.

There’s that old joke about how everything with an input form is a social media platform.