6 ms·
How is Ariana going to justify not paying almost all contributors now? Amazing that she built this on the backs of authors, most of whom got paid nothing. Am
by earl 16y ago
How is Ariana going to justify not paying almost all contributors now?
Amazing that she built this on the backs of authors, most of whom got paid nothing. Am I alone in finding this exploitative?
- jdludlow 16y agoWas she forcing them to write articles for her? If they agreed to do it for free, then where is the exploitation?
- radicaldreamer 16y agoI think a lot of authors and journalists voluntarily write for Huff Post to raise their profile... and I think it's great! If I were a journalist, if Huff Post or Talking Points Memo published articles that I authored, I'd be ecstatic, especially considering the economic situation a lot of journalists find themselves in these days.
- lachyg 16y agoThis is the exact same argument that is used for people in-favor of 'SPEC' work. Which gets down voted to nothing on HackerNews, yet this and its parent are getting upvoted. Interesting.
- wmeredith 16y agoIt's all about context: If someone asks me for spec work I tell them no, if I ask someone to do spec work for them to raise my profile I'm hoping they don't tell me no.
- earl 16y agoProfile doesn't pay the rent. http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2002/4/29/ http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2002/4/29/
- cookiecaper 16y agoI think the theory is that high profile is an investment that makes it easier to find rent money down the road.
- gaius 16y agoYes but the practice is there's always someone a year younger than you who thinks that too, and so he's working for free and hoping the same thing. Then a year later, another one...
- cookiecaper 16y agoTrue, but next year you shouldn't be working for free anymore. There are always going to be clients who care most about getting something cheap or free, and there are always going to be clients who care most about getting something good. Do a few deals for the cheaply oriented clients so you have something that will impress the quality oriented clients and then move up quickly, don't lollygag in the cheap valley very long.
- gaius 16y agoA year just isn't that much experience in many fields. You'll be competing with people who are 90% as good as you but cost infinitely less (as in, nothing).
- kmfrk 16y agoJust ask world-renowned David Prowse.
- JonnieCache 16y agoI know this is not what we're talking about, but you must be very careful using this line of argument. Would you apply it equally to prostitution?
- Samuel_Michon 16y agoJust wondering: where are all those hookers who perform their services for free?
- steveklabnik 16y agoDisregard the payment: his argument is that "They knew what they were getting into" doesn't make it moral. People can (and often do) enter into exploitative relationships knowingly, with open arms. Ever been by a lottery counter? Exploitation is about power, not the money that's involved.
- JonnieCache 16y ago>Exploitation is about power, not the money that's involved. Yes. I was also talking about the fact that sometimes circumstances force people into exploitative situations. Heroin/crack addicts often face a choice between prostitution or death from withdrawal symptoms. The obvious answer is to jump up the ladder and say "well they chose to start taking drugs;" it is often not as simple as that either unfortunately.
- sammcd 16y agoChrome and Android make google lots of money, yet people that aren't google employees still commit to the projects. Google pays them nothing. I don't find this exploitive, and I think this is very similar.
- hartror 16y agoChrome makes Google lots of money directly? I'm not so sure about that. A post on the Huffington has advertisements alongside it making the company money. That alone makes it much more a grey area than contributing to an open source project. It seems it is a trade off good writers are choosing to make and if there is more value in their writing a competitor will come along and steal the best writers.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- sammcd 16y agoChrome makes Google money in the same way that articles make the Huffington post money. The Huffington Post makes money on ads. Every user who uses Google Chrome is a user that isn't using another browser. This means Google makes more money on search ads because they aren't giving a cut to Mozilla, Apple, etc.
- narag 16y agoLicenses of open source projects warrant that the work can be used, modified and even forked by anyone. Similarity seems only superficial.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- greyman 16y agoI think it is not exploitative if the authors knew it beforehand and agreed to it. They've got exposure as a compensation. What I find more exploitative is their working method - often, they took some hard news (which is quite expensive to produce, requiring real reporter to go somewhere), and then their blogger (siting at home in pajamas) took the best quotes and facts from that article, wrote some quick fluff around those quotes and hola!, we have content. Yes, this is essentially what blogging is about, and if someone does this as an amateur to express his opinion, that's ok. But I feel it is a bit exploitative to make business out of work of journalists working for other media.
- mtw 16y agothe worse part is seeing Huffington post valued at $330m, while the New York Times market cap is "only" 1.64B. The NYT company does investigations, produces photography and video, has foreign bureaus etc. For me, this means there's more value rehashing content than producing original content