Why just moderating? In a sense, it's every action you do that adds value to the site by drawing people in or improving their experience.
When users write a comment (such as what I'm writing right now on Hacker News), they are acting as writers who generate text for people to read. When they submit a link, they are locating content for people to read. When they upvote or downvote, they are acting somewhat like editors by helping to curate content.
In traditional media (a newspaper, for example), these functions would typically be performed by paid staff. In social media, it doesn't work that way.
But then the whole point of social media is to interact with other people. And interaction is two-way. You could argue that the value users receive from interacting is the reason they come to the site. And consuming content is part of that value, but you could also argue that being heard is part of the value you receive as a user.
When I do any of any of these things, am I doing labor by giving up my valuable time in service of the business? Or am I receiving value because the site allows me to be heard? Maybe the answer is both. Probably we should look at every aspect of the transaction.
Continuing the newspaper comparison, look at letters to the editor. Does anyone argue that people who write letters to the editor are unpaid volunteers? Not that I know of, because everyone understands that people write those letters because they want their opinion to be heard. So even in traditional media there's a little precedent for this.
In practice, that means that normal commenters or people using social media aren't relevant for two reasons:
* There's minimal control over their actions from the 'employer'. There's some basic rules on what content is not allowed, but nobody says "you must write a question about Java every day". You can use the tools available however you'd like, and you have freedom over when and how you use SO/social media - there's no obligation to post with any specific frequency. That's not true for moderators: they have specific tasks they must complete, and they must continue to be active, or they lose their moderation status.
* There's no permanent relationship: you can use social media/SO once, leave, and return any time you like, and leave again. This is not true for moderators.
> That's not true for moderators: they have specific tasks they must complete, and they must continue to be active, or they lose their moderation status.
That’s not correct: especially on the small sites, it’s acceptable for moderators to be inactive for long periods of time. It’s not great, but it’s understood that moderators have lives, and that they’re … not employees. I can state this confidently because I used to be a moderator on smaller sites, and I finally resigned from one (without having been in any way encouraged to) after almost a year of inactivity.
The official limit is no activity for 6 months, at that point the moderator status is supposed to be removed. This has been enforced rather inconsistently at times.
What kind of job? The person who prepares and files my taxes will retain their status as "my" CPA basically forever, but they only do my taxes once per year.
> especially on the small sites, it’s acceptable for moderators to be inactive for long periods of time
Interesting!
I can see that being a case against the original point then: if moderators really are free to work or not work however they'd like, then that seems to suggest that they don't match this test, and they're nothing like employees at all.
Do you have to turn up enough to keep up with the moderation queue on those small sites though? If there were a whole bunch of flags waiting on a small site for a while, and as a moderator you weren't helping out, would you lose your moderator status there?
That’s exactly what happened, and no, I didn’t lose my status. There are internal metrics for showing individual moderators’ activity but — at least while I was a moderator —these were purely FYI, and not used to enforce activity. I eventually resigned because I was aware that my inactivity was causing backlog that created more work for other moderators. I don’t remember exactly what happened next but since moderators are elected yearly by the community I suspect that new elections were held. However, I need to emphasise that I was relatively inactive for more than a year, and completely inactive for many months.
My karma score is pretty big evidence against the theory that there’s no permanent relationship. Users can become highly invested in particular communities!
I also abide by fairly strict code of conduct / moderation policies when writing on certain platforms. If I don’t abide by the community rules my posts can be flagged or even my account banned.
Paid writing is absolutely a trade, so I can’t see how any policy that sweeps up moderation can’t also equally apply to comment writing.
The government has a nasty habit of taking a concept like “work” or “income” and then applying it to literally everything so that they can regulate and tax literally everything. To the point where the IRS had to define specific exceptions for family chores lest they be deemed as barter and requiring the payment of payroll taxes.
Luckily in this case we have the 1st Amendment which should provide a pretty strong defense against any attempt to limit basic community social activities and the necessity of moderating those interactions.
Despite the fact that [I would hope] my comments on HN accrue significant value to the HN site, and that those comments are indeed work of the kind that some people even get paid for, my 1st amendment right to post here should override the interest of the State in establishing minimum wage requirements. Would love to hear a constitutional law scholar’s thoughts on this!
> To the point where the IRS had to define specific exceptions for family chores lest they be deemed as barter and requiring the payment of payroll taxes.
Hold on a minute here, can you point me to where this is actually codified? I found "Publication 926 (2019), Household Employer's Tax Guide" but that doesn't seem to be quite right. Or I just didn't read enough of that rather lengthy document.
> my 1st amendment right to post here should override the interest of the State in establishing minimum wage requirements
I'm not sure I've ever run into a situation where constitutional law was used to continue doing a thing for free. Genuinely interesting POV there.
Great point. It makes sense that it wouldn't just be the value you might get or give but the terms under which you do it. That's a logical distinction to make.
checkout the steemit platform for an example of an online community where all forms of contributing, as long as people believe it added value, can be rewarded. The content is mostly crypto related, but I think its an interesting alternative to our current reputation based models because it means you can transfer the value you contributed to that site into real money whereas reputation is non transferable accross different platoforms.
Moderating is very different from a letter to the editor. A moderator is making editorial decisions on behalf of the company using company guidelines and standards. They are held to a set of standards as well, and released from their service if they violate them.
Contributions are more like letters to the editor. The content has value to the company, but the company doesn’t exert control over either the asking or answering of questions.
The whole point of Stackoverflow, which was pretty clear if you listened to the podcasts that described some of the early planning aspects of the community was that it would be self-governing. Decisions were later made to implement a Wikipedia-style moderation system, which is problematic at a for-profit company.
> So even in traditional media there's a little precedent for this.
There may not be a precedent in traditional media but boy there is an Internet entity that well known to us already: Wikipedia.
Many forget that Wikipedia (where anyone can contribute) was part inspiration for SE as was Experts-Exchange, and Wikipedia is indeed organized as a non-profit via WikiMedia.
This meta post might be the one that forces investors to re-organize SE as the social good that it is rather than as an asset that needs to be exploited.
The fact remains that moderating forums is labor, and stack exchange receives a lot of value from that labor that the mods themselves don't see a dime of.
I run a forum and there's no shortage of people who would happily volunteer for a mod role.
You have it wrong though: they get plenty of compensation through reputation, clout, and a feeling of power over their peers and being heard and helping out in a community that they love (or some combo of these). That's why they do it. Why is that not a fair trade without money exchanging hands?
Growing up, I used to mow an aging neighbor's lawn because he was basically couch-ridden. It made me feel good to help someone else out. Was I being exploited and should I have demanded payment, or was that just a fair trade that I volunteered for and could quit at any time?
Or look no further than HN. Participating on this forum writing content and enriching YC's coffers is "labor". And our compensation is procrastination and venting and feeling some satisfaction for scrawling our opinions online. If we didn't like that deal, we wouldn't be here.
The thing is, the service and main value that Stack Exchange provides is literally a moderated forum for people to ask and answer questions. Without that moderation, the service would be much less valuable, because it would be full of spam and worthless questions and answers, and less people would use it. This is what drives their revenue and their valuation.
This isn't the case with HN, where the main contribution of the forums to their business is mainly brand recognition.
>I run a forum and there's no shortage of people who would happily volunteer for a mod role.
There's no shortage of people who want to be rulers of a community. Of those, it is always hard to find the ones who are actually fit for that purpose.
Yes, but ...arrgh... they are doing this of their own free will and choice, perhaps because they enjoy it, they increase their social interactions, increase their skills... etc. It seems contrary to the concept of freedom if private parties cannot engage in such a relationship, if each and both so choose.
I'm not saying that the situation is necessarily bad, or that the people who willingly do this for free are suckers. I can't speak for them, and I don't know the conditions that the moderators labor under.
All I'm saying that the situation is still exploitation, no matter how you cut it. More and more businesses derive their main value from unpaid contributors, and it's something that should give us all pause.
The idea behind these laws limit the extent that people can circumvent minimum wage. It also prevents de facto enslavement or indentured servitude, but probably to a lesser degree.
This type of discussion usually comes up in the context of internship positions, where federally an unpaid internship must not displace employees and must provide no value to the employer.
Should we require the elderly to pay their adult children minimum wage for looking after them? Because that is far more like work than being a moderator on a website.
If the elderly person requires the child to wear a tee-shirt with and advert on, which the elderly person earns money off, and the elderly person is getting rich off asking the child to look after them for "good will" then... yeah, they probably should be paid. It's not charity, it's not family, it's exploitation.
When users write a comment (such as what I'm writing right now on Hacker News), they are acting as writers who generate text for people to read. When they submit a link, they are locating content for people to read. When they upvote or downvote, they are acting somewhat like editors by helping to curate content.
In traditional media (a newspaper, for example), these functions would typically be performed by paid staff. In social media, it doesn't work that way.
But then the whole point of social media is to interact with other people. And interaction is two-way. You could argue that the value users receive from interacting is the reason they come to the site. And consuming content is part of that value, but you could also argue that being heard is part of the value you receive as a user.
When I do any of any of these things, am I doing labor by giving up my valuable time in service of the business? Or am I receiving value because the site allows me to be heard? Maybe the answer is both. Probably we should look at every aspect of the transaction.
Continuing the newspaper comparison, look at letters to the editor. Does anyone argue that people who write letters to the editor are unpaid volunteers? Not that I know of, because everyone understands that people write those letters because they want their opinion to be heard. So even in traditional media there's a little precedent for this.