this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2026
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I’m just going to repeat myself for the hundredth time here. This is exactly what happens when you define words in such broad terms. Social media does not include things like discord. It doesn’t include Reddit, it doesn’t include Lemmy. But because so many damn people just refer to any site that they can talk with other people on as social media, it became enshrined in law and now literally every service you touch is legally defined as social media.
This is not hyperbole; with the current definitions across numerous countries, Amazon (the place where you buy things, not other services like games) is legally defined as social media.
Words mean things and when words are hijacked for other purposes it allows governments to strip away your rights without you realizing.
Okay, I'm gonna ask: why is reddit not social media?
It's all the same for me. It doesn't matter, whether it's discord, games, reddit, lemmy, Mastodon, mbin, X, Facebook. It's all the same and also at the not the same.
But in the end it's all software. I hope that we can agree with. And this software is empowering people. And politics don't like that..
Words don't have meanings. Meanings have words.
Amazon the internet megastore allows non-employees of Amazon to add content to their store. Both as supposed vendors offering goods for services and as customers giving reviews and ratings to such store listings. And Amazon chooses what listings to show to users through opaque algorithms.
Can you give an example of the sort of regulation a social media site should need to follow which Amazon should be exempt from? Or the sort of rule that should bind reddit and Facebook but not Amazon?
I vote for this guy for president.
I grew up with certain words meaning certain things. Then I get older, and suddenly, those words are gone, new words exist, old words mean new things, medical terms are now no longer medical terms and just purely an insult derived from a definition that didn't used to define the root word. Pluto isn't a planet. Instead of 9 planets, there are now an unknown number at least in the thousands. There's like 4 other Earths.
Language shouldn't change over time. It can adapt, but I should know that grass is green. Not grass is plubertatude. A word I just made up for the demonstration of absurdity. Nothing wrong with grass being green.
Language drifts over time, that's normal, always has been. Stay on target soldier. FORMAL language however needs very strict definitions or it just stops working. Words mean things is true. That still doesn't mean you get to say the "R" word.