Yeah, and if you look at all the engagement tactics that the NPR, NYTimes, or the CNN apps use, they are basically saying: spend your time here and not there.

Most of the internet is vying for your attention and asking you to spend more time on their site than the others.

To truly come up with meaningful solutions, we need to look at the entire problem. Otherwise we're just moving marbles around.

I think there is not just one problem, people have different needs and holes to fill.

The social media platforms attract different demographics, because they fit in different niches.

The reason why people are drawn to Facebook, differs from 4chan.

On Instagram people want to be discovered and seen, creating and sharing art and take the credit for it.

While people go to 4chan to be anonymous, which generates questionable content.

I personally go on HN because the community is close to home, but why is that?

I'd struggle to place Discord, HN and possibly Reddit into the "social media" category. They sure aren't dead websites and they sure have a community, but they don't feel the same way as Facebook, Twitter and TikTok. Maybe it's the lack of name recognition that makes them feel different.

Discord definitely falls under the “social networking” category, but can definitely used as a social media platform.

The rest is certainly social media.

The difference essentially,

Social media: broadcast a message, share news, showcase your stuff and get people to interact with it: Facebook, insta, tiktok, reddit, HN - not necessarily two-way

Social networking: engage in two-way communication with similar minded people

I spend way too much time reading HN and reddit. Most of the time I'm not even logged in, but I'm still pretty much addicted. I also don't really see any reason to treat these sorts of sites differently.