• Krauerking@lemy.lol
        4¡
        23 days ago

        call lemmy home-grown weed

        Yup, occasionally it is really good but every now and again you smoke something so horrendous you wonder how someone grew that on purpose, but also sometimes you find a seed that makes you think about growing something yourself and seeing how it goes.

    • tyler@programming.dev
      6¡
      23 days ago

      Lemmy is a forum, not social media. It has none of the hallmarks of social media, and is only alike in the fact that you talk to other people, which is literally the entire point of the internet in the first place.

      Edit: I decided to write this up since I argue this all the time.

      Short argument for those that don’t care and just want to argue:

      • governments want to restrict your rights
      • what better way to do so than using a definition that most people think they understand, but actually covers every website in existence

      Long argument:

      Forums have existed long before social media. Social media derived from social networking, sites like SixDegrees.com, MySpace, AOL, Facebook, etc. An example of a pure social networking site is LinkedIn. The elements that make it social networking:

      • real names
      • networking with people you know
      • main purpose is “keeping in touch” with friends and acquaintances

      Social media spread from social networking. People realized they could talk on a global scale rather than just with their friends and acquaintances. Twitter popped up. Most people still used their real names, but many used anonymous tags. It was still predominantly random topics to ‘keep in touch’ but with followers rather than acquaintances. Then Instagram. Still random topics, purpose is still to connect with others, except now it’s sharing things on a wider scale.

      Notice how none of these things are things you do on a forum. You use anonymous usernames and the main purpose is talking about a shared topic, getting help, etc. not random daily posts, checkins etc. Forums are targeted discussions. You don’t follow other users, you don’t know them personally (knowing them personally is not the reason for being on the platform), you have no network graph, and they have existed for decades without being breeding grounds for the terrible things that have emerged from social media sites where fake news can spread like wildfire.

      What does this all lead to? Well imagine that society decides that soda is bad and needs to be regulated (already happened in many countries). So the government decides that they’re going to ban children from drinking soda. Yay! Oh wait, but the government has decided that soda actually is “any drink with flavoring and/or bubbles in it”. Oh dang. You just banned every drink on the planet, yet citizens think that children have only been banned from drinking soda. Nope. No more water, milk, tea, coffee, literally nothing is drinkable by children anymore.

      That’s what’s happening with social media. Social media has become such a broad term, that it covers every website (essentially) on the planet.

      Here’s the Australian Age Restriction law definition of ‘social media’:

      • The sole purpose, or a significant purpose, of the service is to enable online social interaction between two or more end-users.
      • The service allows end-users to link to, or interact with, some or all of the other end-users.
      • The service allows end-users to post material on the service.
      • The service has a ‘recommender feature’ and/or ‘logged in feature’ as defined in the Rules.
      • Material on the service is accessible to, or delivered to, end-users in Australia.

      This means that Stack Overflow, a help forum for software developers, is Social Media. This definition includes News websites that have comment sections (all of them). This definition includes any website where you can talk to another human being, for example a car forum or a microcontroller forum. This definition literally includes Amazon for fucks sake. What would Amazon be without customer reviews? Well according to this definition they wouldn’t be Social Media.

      You might say “those types of sites don’t have recommender or logged in features”, well the “‘recommender feature’ and/or ‘logged in feature’” rule is doing a hell of a lot of lifting here, let’s look at what it has to say:

       (1) For the purposes of paragraph 63C(1)(a)(iv) of the Act, it is a condition that the service has either or both of:

 (a) a recommender feature;

 (b) a logged‑in feature.

Recommender feature

 (2) A service has a recommender feature if the service can:

 (a) select material by reference to any information that the service has associated with an end‑user’s account; and

 (b) display that material to the end‑user while the end‑user is using the service.

Logged‑in features

 (3) A service has a logged‑in feature if the service:

 (a) has one or more of the following features:

 (i) an endless‑feed feature;

 (ii) a feedback feature; or

 (iii) a time‑limited feature; and

 (b) does not enable an end‑user to access, or be exposed to, at least one such feature unless the end‑user is using the service with an account.

 (4) A service has an endless‑feed feature if the service can display material to an end‑user:

 (a) in a feed of material that has no end‑point; or

 (b) in a feed of material that has an end‑point, but to which additional material is added:

 (i) when that end‑point is reached; or

 (ii) at time intervals; or

 (iii) in response to the end‑user’s input.

 (5) A service has a feedback feature if the service can display information to an end‑user about:

 (a) the extent to which other end‑users have viewed or otherwise engaged with material posted by the end‑user on the service; or

 (b) the extent to which other end‑users have opted to receive notifications about the end‑user’s account or material posted by the end‑user on the service.

 (6) A service has a time‑limited feature if the service enables an end‑user to view material that is available to be viewed on the service only within a limited period after it has been posted.

      Alright so 2(a), literally just means showing anything to a user based on history. So if you turn on the setting to hide read posts on Lemmy then Lemmy immediately would apply here.

      On news sites they use cookies to track you so you don’t even need to be logged in for this to happen, and there’s no rule here stating that it has to be end-user created material so all news sites with comment sections would meet this requirement if they do anything with a cookie or geo location or anything like that.

      For the car forum example you might say “forums don’t really track things”, well that’s where you get into the “Logged-in features” section, 3(a)(i); an endless‑feed feature. 3(b) states “does not enable an end‑user to access, or be exposed to, at least one such feature unless the end‑user is using the service with an account.” well that’s posting, so any forum automatically meets that, so what is an endless feed?

      (4) A service has an endless‑feed feature if the service can display material to an end‑user:  (b) in a feed of material that has an end‑point, but to which additional material is added:  (iii) in response to the end‑user’s input.

      great. So clicking the next button at the bottom of the forum page to go to the next page counts as an “endless feed”.

      Australia is a fantastic example of people thinking the government is enacting one law when in reality they are enacting a law that will regulate every part of society. Australia is moving slowly to not alarm people, but the law does affect these other websites, they just don’t realize it yet.

      To be clear, there is no way to regulate the social media that people think is bad versus any other social media, according to these random definitions. If you see someone trying to regulate social media, or someone stating that social media applies to forums, you should scream and yell and make as much noise as possible, because all they are trying to do is regulate the entire internet to remove your speech.

      I’ve been warning about this for years and everything I’ve warned about is already coming true. As long as people continue to claim that Reddit and Lemmy are social media the problem will only get worse. The problem isn’t talking to others online. It’s these massive corporations that use algorithms to manipulate you. The commonality here isn’t “talking to people”. It’s $$$.

      • renzhexiangjiao@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        9¡
        23 days ago

        definition of social media (from Merriam Webster):

        forms of electronic communication (such as websites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (such as videos)

        lemmy fits this definition perfectly, what are you on about?

        • tyler@programming.dev
          3¡
          23 days ago

          Yep and that definition includes every website on the planet. It’s a completely useless definition, spread by newscasters that have no clue what they’re talking about, completely diluting the term and making it so that lawmakers can pass laws restricting ALL of your rights on the internet but making citizens think only a subset are being affected.

          For example both Amazon, Alibaba, GM’s blog, and news sites meet that definition.

          That definition does nothing to describe social media except help the government restrict your rights.

        • sos242@thelemmy.club
          1¡
          23 days ago

          They are saying the root of the problem is not social media in itself, but the algorithm based feeds that are designed to get you addicted.

      • Zarobi@aussie.zoneEnglish
        4¡
        23 days ago

        It feels like social media to me. It has upvotes, replies, notifications, comments, a feed… If it’s not a social media then neither is Reddit, and at that point the word stops being meaningful. Look right now we’re even arguing about semantics just like any good social media

        • tyler@programming.dev
          2¡
          23 days ago

          If it’s not a social media then neither is Reddit

          Correct

          Look right now we’re even arguing about semantics just like any good social media

          Semantics matter when they’re being used to restrict your rights. The current “definition” of social media was spread by a person trying to get a business degree, and they just made up a definition that happens to include pretty much the entirety of the internet. Newscasters that didn’t know any better started calling anything that made it to the news “social media” even though we had a perfectly fine definition before that. Forums existed long before social media did, forums are not social media, and both Lemmy and Reddit are forums of forums, not social media.

          Don’t get me wrong, Reddit is terrible. But so is 4chan and I don’t think anyone is calling 4chan social media.

          • Zarobi@aussie.zoneEnglish
            0¡
            23 days ago
            • The sole purpose, or a significant purpose, of the service is to enable online social interaction between two or more end-users.

            You can’t argue that a news site that happens to have a complementary comments section is the sole purpose of the service. It’s not comparable to Reddit and Facebook at all. Look I hate the social media ban as much as you, but that’s a completely separate issue you just mixed up in there.

            Governments banning websites is a whole other kettle of fish I don’t really want to get into right now. Social media has always been a vague definition. It’s like porn, you can’t define it, but you know it when you see it.

            4chan is a forum because it lacks the features that make it social media-y. There’s no upvotes. There’s no feed. It’s just a list of unstructured posts and comments. What would happen if you added upvotes, comment threads, direct messages, friends list, an algorithmic home page, to 4chan? Oh look it’s Reddit. Which is a social media.

            You can’t just change the definition of words because you don’t like governments restricting them. The actual problem is governments attacking your rights, it has nothing at all to do with social media. If instead of restricting social media they restricted specifically “comment sections”, would you be arguing with me on the formal definition of a comment section?

            Again I get that you hate the restrictions. I think they’re dumb too and I live in AU. But the definition of social media is not the problem here.

            • tyler@programming.dev
              1¡
              22 days ago

              You can’t just change the definition of words because you don’t like governments restricting them. The actual problem is governments attacking your rights, it has nothing at all to do with social media. If instead of restricting social media they restricted specifically “comment sections”, would you be arguing with me on the formal definition of a comment section?

              here’s the thing. the definition didn’t include forums until news casters started talking about it. No one on the internet called forums social media. No one called forums social networks. News casters that didn’t understand what they were talking about were the ones changing the definition. It’s a bit like newscasters talking about tide pods like people were actually eating them. They were naive, tricked, and didn’t understand the culture around it. So falsehoods were spread and now we’re in the situation we’re in.

              No one in their right mind thinks of GM’s Blog as Social Media… and yet that’s literally where the dictionary definition of social media comes from. A business student wrote a paper and claimed that GM’s blog would be considered social media. The entire Webster’s dictionary definition rests on one person who claimed some absolutely batshit insane things as social media.

              But that’s not what people that use the internet actually think. Like you said “It’s like porn, you can’t define it, but you know it when you see it.” And forums aren’t social media. If they were, then everything is social media and the term is useless.

              • Zarobi@aussie.zoneEnglish
                0¡
                22 days ago

                Myself and everyone I know considers Reddit to be a social media. Along with TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Lemmy. Some grey area ones are Discord and Snapchat. So if you work backwards from there, the Aus Gov definition you listed above is actually pretty reasonable.

                I agree that the forums I used to ask for help in Diablo 2 don’t count as social media, and they are rightly excluded in the definition you listed. So you’re really just trying to argue that Reddit and Lemmy is a forum instead of a social media, which you’re entitled to your opinion of course, but most people will disagree with you.

      • Grail@multiverse.soulism.netEnglish
        3¡
        23 days ago

        Forums are a type of social media.

        Look, the six types of social media are: mail, instant chat, forum, blog, feed, and game. Twitter, Instagram, and Tiktok are feeds. Discord and Whatsapp are instant chat. Email is mail. Reddit is a forum that wants to be a feed, and it used to also have mail, but they got rid of it and replaced it with instant chat. Tumblr is both a blog and a feed, as is youtube. Any site with user pages is technically also a blog, but most such sites would rather be feeds. And then there’s games, most notably World of Warcraft, but also Halo and Minecraft and chess.com.

    • taiyang@lemmy.world
      3¡
      23 days ago

      I was thinking Lemmy isn’t even a real drug. It’s that weird kid who hands you a paper bag to hyperventilate until you feel high.

      Or maybe that shit with the whipped cream cans. Except it’s whipped beans.