In most ways they were far more social than modern social media, in that they were about socializing. The distinguishing characteristic that sets modern social media apart from the old school stuff is the performative aspect of it—where everyone is now encouraged to behave as a content producer optimizing for engagement—which is hardly social.

Not in the modern sense.

Those mediums do not have algorithms, feeds, followers, profiles, influencers, likes, or any features that many people point to as the toxic aspects of pretty much every commercial social media site of the last decade.

I’d say livejournal was the tipping point where the internet became very self-centered and your value in the platform was measured by how much engagement you were able to get.

Up until that point, in a world before blogs, social sites were mostly centered around shared interests and communities would aggressively police off topic content

> Usenet, BBSs, mailing lists etc. are social media

In a generic sense, yes. People did socialize.

But "social media" today really means: a proprietary platform controlled by a single corporation, where all the user interaction is ultimately just a ploy to keep the participation metrics up so the corporation can profile you better and sell more advertising.

So in that sense, the absolute opposite.

Those are very social places but I would classify them as not social media because real names / identities weren't attached.

They are social networks not social media, social media is when you scream in a void and the void screams back.

The latrinalia of our age if you will.