Hacker News is almost indistinguishable in spirit from a well-run subreddit. Reddit is not centered on user profiles and followers and yet, Reddit is included in the Australia's social media ban.
It is clear from the ruling that by including YouTube, Reddit and Facebook, they take a broad definition of what social media is, essentially anything with user interaction and Hacker News definitely fits the bill.
And if your criteria includes "social aspects like user profiles and followers", then GitHub would fit too: it has user profiles, followers / stars, and allows for discussion. It is even included in the "social media" list for ESTA and visa applications for the US. We could even include StackOverflow, I mean, it used to be common practice to build a profile, chasing a reputation score so that you could show off to recruiters.
> Reddit is not centered on user profiles and followers and yet
This is not entirely correct anymore, many of the new features added to Reddit over the last 5 years have focussed on expanding precisely this aspect of the site.
Originally it wasn't. It was more similar to hackernews, just more general. Lately it's going all in on wanting to be a social media platform full of dark design patterns to keep people hooked. Hackernews has barely changed from its beginning. I don't feel overwhelmed browsing it. Five minutes of reddit and I fall into a dopamine hole that can be hard to get out of. It's no longer part of my daily routine for that reason.
