I agree. To me, the definitive negative characteristic of Social Media is the "feed," where each person has a unique view of content. There's no good way to "curate" that for engagement (or monetize for advertising) without creating toxic incentives.
HN is a forum because everyone sees the same discussion.
That's a really important distinction I hadn't thought about.
When you can make a feed that "feeds" you own preconceived ideas as reality, you get told the world is just as you imagined, you're always right, and those who disagree are obviously evil and/or stupid.
That's really insightful. Maybe that's one reason that I like MeWe: it has a feed, but it's so useless that I ignore it completely and use the chats attached to the various groups I joined. I use it like a hub of forums.
Do you think it's possible forums can make a true comeback? They are overall healthier, but can they be profitable? Also if anyone has more research on social media alternatives, I'd love some references.
Reddit is kinda-sorta a forum site. You can treat a single sub as a forum by ordering posts chronologically. phpbb style forums still exist and are the best place to discuss some topics. In the RV/truck space there are still many forums that have been bought and consolidated under a few holding companies. They still operate as distinct boards, however.
I don't think a binary definition is meaningful. Instead, what I focus on is the continuum of how much control you as a user have over the content that is presented to you.
At one end, you have the default Reddit front page. You get a torrent of posts completely unrelated to your specific interests or people you care about. It's as close to "the front page of the Internet" as you can get. Like staring into the collective psyche of the web.
At the other end, you have Google search. You only see pages you specifically request for by an explicit search query at that point in time. If you don't search, nothing is given to you. You have almost complete control over your attention.
Social media sites/apps are generally points between those. Critically, most give you more flexibility in how you use them than users get credit for. If you use Reddit by just browsing the front page and not even logging in, yes, it's the worst of all possible worlds. But if you create an account, unsubscribe from all the default subreddits, and only follow subreddits that are interesting to you and well moderated, then you have a lot more control. My Reddit experience is uniformly positive and enriching.
Twitter can also be a nourishing experience, but you have to be careful about who you follow, and turn off retweets for most of the people you follow.
Facebook is harder but if you disable all posts from sites that users often reshare, that removes a ton of clutter. Unfollowing people also helps.
Complete control over attention maybe, but not complete control over what you see. Google targets your results like Twitter and Facebook target your feed. Reddit and HN don't do this.
I don't think a continuum along a single axis can reveal what's truly pathological about social media. If you break it up into multiple axes, I think problematic tech will cluster into quadrants where algorithms are targeting you personally in various ways.
I think there's a few well-moderated large subreddits that I read periodically that are pretty similar to HN. Like if you go to r/linux, I doubt most people would say that's toxic. It's probably worse than HN, but that might be down to dang be good at moderating.
I guess it's a social medium but it feels different.
To be a social medium/network, I think you need to follow/"friend" specific people. That's what makes it social.
I'd say HN is a "forum".
I realize these are my personal definitions, and there are no correct answers.