• atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works
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      10 hours ago

      The Usenet user count has never been higher than it currently is, and it very much is social media. What changed is that AT&T and others stopped including Usenet access as part of your Internet plan several years ago so it got a little harder to get to but not impossible.

      • NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip
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        10 hours ago

        In what universe is Usenet social media? Seriously?

        Usenet is dead. Gone. What remains today is just a shell game of corporate owners. It is nothing like what it used to be.

        Next thing you know you will try and tell me Lemmy is social media.

        • keimevo@lemmy.world
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          1 hour ago

          Lemmy isn’t social media? Given that it is mostly a federated reddit clone, I would argue it is. Probably even more social than reddit considering that reddit has now more bots than people, unlike Lemmy (at least for now), and I think that a platform full of bots talking among themselves is not really “social”.

          • NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip
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            1 hour ago

            I disagree. It’s missing everything that makes social media, social media.

            Its anonymous. No self promotion. No actual socializing. No controlling body, and rarely even media. No monetization.

            Reddit was a link aggregator. They kind of socialized it with adding media uploads, and some people try and use it that way, but it really doesn’t meet the criteria either.

            Just like a bbs and Usenet were conversational, and in some ways a bit social, neither were “social media”. And Lemmy isn’t either.

            This term comes from companies pushing to monetize and unannonymize people. Facebook, or back in the day certain parts of AOL.

            Lemmy and reddit are link aggregating forums. We call them forums!