this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2026
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Those were not considered social media in their heyday as the term was created after them specifically for sites where a user would maintain a non-anonymous profile, post content about themselves and curating a feed based on other profiles followed.
Forums and Usenet could be considered proto-social-media perhaps given they were clear precursors to it
Of course. I find "social media" a suboptimal term anyway. A good term for the concept is the "participatory Internet".
But if we are going to use it, then it's just media that is produced by society at large as opposed to paid journalists or authors. Meaning Usenet is social media.