Ask HN: It's World Social Media Day. Which current ones you do and don't enjoy?
On World Social Media Day, Hacker News users shared their platform preferences. HN and Reddit were praised for text-based communities, while many criticized YouTube for AI-generated content and unwanted recommendations. Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat saw less use among respondents, with Pinterest noted as popular among female users.
Background
June 30 is World Social Media Day, an unofficial observance created in 2010 by tech blog Mashable to celebrate the impact of social media. The HN post asks users to reflect on which platforms they still enjoy and which have become annoying. Key context: "AI slop" refers to low-quality, often generic content (text, images, video) produced or heavily augmented by generative AI models, which has been flooding feeds across YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram in 2024–2025. "AI-generated thumbnails" are click-bait images made with tools like Midjourney or DALL·E, often criticized as ugly or misleading. The post also touches on a common sentiment among HN users: that text-only, low-noise spaces (like Hacker News itself) feel increasingly rare as algorithmic feeds push short-form video and AI-generated content.