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Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

(techcrunch.com)
707 points patd | 4 comments | 27 May 20 12:21 UTC | HN request time: 0.848s | source
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jdhn ◴[27 May 20 13:37 UTC] No.23322964[source]▶
Putting aside concerns about overreach government powers, would ending social media as we know it really be a bad thing?
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1. Someone1234 ◴[27 May 20 13:55 UTC] No.23323269[source]▶
Just so we're clear: Hacker News is social media.
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2. hunter2_ ◴[27 May 20 14:10 UTC] No.23323521[source]▶
Are message boards / BBS / forums?
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3. danShumway ◴[27 May 20 14:28 UTC] No.23323831[source]▶
Yes.

I don't want to be dismissive, if you have some kind of distinction you're trying to get at, I'm open to hearing it. But I personally don't see a big conceptual difference between Reddit and a forum, other than that one of them happened to get bigger. And I'm pretty skeptical of using size as a criteria here, because it would force us to say that Google+ and MySpace stopped being social media at some point when they dipped in popularity.

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4. hunter2_ ◴[28 May 20 01:59 UTC] No.23332599{3}[source]▶
The distinction I was going for was things that predate the classification terminology. I guess there's no particular reason not to apply such classification retroactively, but it feels a bit weird considering that in the heyday of these technologies, few if any people referred to them as social media. Seems a bit like saying "let's stream some music" as you're loading up a CD player. Technically yes there is a stream of bits but it just seems silly to speak in such terms.