"Sure I exaggerated the privacy risk and hyperbolized my experience but it's because I'm passionate about privacy! I'm not like those losers on Facebook spreading fake news."
They're doing the exact same thing. Pseudonymous and anonymous social networks are also social networks and suffer from the same problems of discourse. The smug "we're not like the normies" attitude often makes this even worse than mainstream social networks, not better.
I’ve always got the sense that this perception was a big reason why Redditors seem to hate Instagram so much. The algorithm does occasionally do some unpleasant things, but 90% of the time it’s great. When I read about people comparing their lives to others and becoming depressed I can’t help but feel like the app might not be the problem.
Reddit and 4chan are different from Facebook and Instagram, but they are still social media.
Wikipedia:
> Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the creation, sharing and aggregation of content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongst virtual communities and networks.
The categorization you’re relying on dates back to the early 2010s; it equates social media with Facebook-style platforms centered on a main feed, profiles, connections, messaging, and other ancillary functionality. This was 15 years ago; YouTube doesn’t have a messaging system anymore, but you would probably still consider it to be social media. Most of the reels you see on Instagram are not from accounts that you follow, and hardly anyone uses their real name to post there, so by your definition it would not qualify as social media, but it plainly is.
I’m familiar with the attitude because I see it all over on 4chan, Reddit, and Hacker News. Someone who posts here claiming they don’t use social media is like someone claiming to be a vegan who eats beef; it’s a clout thing among the strange anti-social subcultures that developed on these platforms used to indicate that the user doesn’t use platforms that involve something as shallow as talking about his personal life.