What social media platforms do you recommend?
What social media platforms do you use and want to recommend to others? Front ends could also be a suggestion, along with lists of great communities.
For example: https://sub.rehab/
Which is a collection of communities from different platforms.
I only use Lemmy now. Lol
I recommend avoiding social media.
she says, on lemmy
That's two time world drivers champion to you.
Everyone of course interacts with different websites in their own way, but for me, personally, I do consider Lemmy (and reddit before I migrated) to be in a different category than Facebook/twitterx/Instagram, etc.
For me, sites like this are primarily link-aggregators. Interacting with other users is a secondary function. Not that I don't do it, I'm here now writing this comment after all, but I'm not here to follow any users in particular. I have no investment in anyones life here, I'm just memeing with a bunch of anonymous strangers. It's basically the online equivalent of talking about the weather with strangers at a bus stop. Sure it's technically social, but I'm not really developing any kind of relationship with anyone here.
I don't consider forum sites to be "social media" in the same sense as, say, Facebook or Tw𝕩tter.
To me, "social media" has to do with the structure of how you're presented things to read or look at: specifically, that this happens according to social connections — connections between one person and another.
On a "social media" service like Facebook or Tw𝕩tter, you see messages based on your "friend" or "follower" connections to other people. When you post, it's your "friends" or "followers" who see your message — people who have told the site they want to hear from you as a person.
On a "forum" service like Reddit or Lemmy, you see messages based on what topical forums you have chosen to subscribe to. When you post, you put your message into a specific forum, and people who subscribe to that forum see your message.
These two structures lead to very different social dynamics.
Interesting distinction, thanks for sharing your thoughts. I guess I've been using "social media" to mean the same things we used to mean by "Web 2.0", platforms primarily populated with user-submitted content. But wikis aren't social media...
I have Signal groups with my friends and family. Nobody but us know what's posted there.
I don't use most social media. Basically Lemmy and Matrix are my only things.
This isn't a recommendation because I haven't tried it yet but I saw this article today about Firefish, another fediverse alternative to Mastodon: https://wedistribute.org/2023/07/how-to-move-from-mastodon-to-firefish/