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Not sure if this is the answer, but if instead of looking at money economics, we look at entertainment economics. Instead of producing crops, people produce ent

Not sure if this is the answer, but if instead of looking at money economics, we look at entertainment economics. Instead of producing crops, people produce entertainment. Instead of being paid with money, they are paid with status/validation/power. I am insufficiently familiar with the feudalism metaphor to claim it doesn't break down, but on a cursory glance, it seems to hold up.

joeythedolphin 3y ago
Entertainment is one piece, but the control of information and narrative is far more critical. Think election victory or losses, capital city riots, business boycots, and opinions towards LGBTQ+ etc. I've always believed flesh and blood died in wars but the war was really over thinking. In today's insular, isolated, community-deprived world, your social media (for many people at least) is their only way to interact with or understand the world at all.
- michaelt 3y ago
  Are these moderators powerful, shady media moguls like Rupert Murdoch? Or are they naive chumps with too much time on their hands, tricked into doing free labour for a big corporation that actively disdains them? I always thought the people manipulating opinion on social media were using bot accounts, rather than moderator positions.
AndrewKemendo 3y ago
It seems like because there isn’t a direct economic exchange, we still want to squeeze that transactional milieu into the equation to answer “why would somebody do something if they aren’t paid.” So the only possible result, because the assumption is that nobody does anything is that isn’t selfishly compensated, is that there MUST be a psychic - non-priced - selfish benefit to the user. That might be true but I’m not sure that you can use those interchangeably because the latter has no pricing mechanism. Using an example to illustrate this, if Reddit it came to me and attempted to charge me to moderate my sub, I would say no. If they offered to pay me to moderate, I would also say no because that would come with an expectation, or some kind of SLA or otherwise that I am not prepared to give. No, I actually think that there’s another organizational structure here that we’ve just not seen or have a name for. Namely it’s where volunteers provide labor for privately owned property, have some control over said property but receive zero of the excess economic value produced by the mix of property holder and labor. Procedurally: 1. Reddit the organization fronts some amount of capital to provide the platform 2. Volunteers then stake claim to manage and curate limited sub-properties (sub reddits) 3. Reddit the organization sells advertisement placement within the volunteer properties - completely separate from and without the collaboration with subreddit moderators 4. Reddit then keeps 100% of the advertising dollars and zero go to the moderators (or for that matter active members who arguably make the bulk of valuable contributions via content that drive revenue) Contributions to “open source” that are not on publicly distributable licenses would fall into this category also. Note here, I’m not using this particular point to complain about the structure - even though I believe it’s not a good structure. I’m simply pointing out that this is a structure that exists for which we don’t really have a coherent understanding of in my opinion
- kixiQu 3y ago
  One thing I'm kind of curious about is: > Using an example to illustrate this, if Reddit it came to me and attempted to charge me to moderate my sub, I would say no. If they offered to pay me to moderate, I would also say no because that would come with an expectation, or some kind of SLA or otherwise that I am not prepared to give. If Reddit came to you and tried to charge you to keep the subreddit running at all – as in, it'd be deleted from the web if the mods didn't pay – would that change the answer here? I have this suspicion that – for at least some smaller subs – it would. And for bigger ones, I would guess mods might not... perhaps because they guess Reddit is already making enough ad money off their work for that exchange to seem unfair.
  - AndrewKemendo 3y ago
    > If Reddit came to you and tried to charge you to keep the subreddit running at all – as in, it'd be deleted from the web if the mods didn't pay – would that change the answer here? I have this suspicion that – for at least some smaller subs – it would. Only speaking for myself and not the rest of the mod team but I would still say no

joeythedolphin 3y ago

Entertainment is one piece, but the control of information and narrative is far more critical. Think election victory or losses, capital city riots, business boycots, and opinions towards LGBTQ+ etc. I've always believed flesh and blood died in wars but the war was really over thinking. In today's insular, isolated, community-deprived world, your social media (for many people at least) is their only way to interact with or understand the world at all.

michaelt 3y ago
Are these moderators powerful, shady media moguls like Rupert Murdoch? Or are they naive chumps with too much time on their hands, tricked into doing free labour for a big corporation that actively disdains them? I always thought the people manipulating opinion on social media were using bot accounts, rather than moderator positions.

AndrewKemendo 3y ago

It seems like because there isn’t a direct economic exchange, we still want to squeeze that transactional milieu into the equation to answer “why would somebody do something if they aren’t paid.” So the only possible result, because the assumption is that nobody does anything is that isn’t selfishly compensated, is that there MUST be a psychic - non-priced - selfish benefit to the user. That might be true but I’m not sure that you can use those interchangeably because the latter has no pricing mechanism. Using an example to illustrate this, if Reddit it came to me and attempted to charge me to moderate my sub, I would say no. If they offered to pay me to moderate, I would also say no because that would come with an expectation, or some kind of SLA or otherwise that I am not prepared to give. No, I actually think that there’s another organizational structure here that we’ve just not seen or have a name for. Namely it’s where volunteers provide labor for privately owned property, have some control over said property but receive zero of the excess economic value produced by the mix of property holder and labor. Procedurally: 1. Reddit the organization fronts some amount of capital to provide the platform 2. Volunteers then stake claim to manage and curate limited sub-properties (sub reddits) 3. Reddit the organization sells advertisement placement within the volunteer properties - completely separate from and without the collaboration with subreddit moderators 4. Reddit then keeps 100% of the advertising dollars and zero go to the moderators (or for that matter active members who arguably make the bulk of valuable contributions via content that drive revenue) Contributions to “open source” that are not on publicly distributable licenses would fall into this category also. Note here, I’m not using this particular point to complain about the structure - even though I believe it’s not a good structure. I’m simply pointing out that this is a structure that exists for which we don’t really have a coherent understanding of in my opinion

kixiQu 3y ago
One thing I'm kind of curious about is: > Using an example to illustrate this, if Reddit it came to me and attempted to charge me to moderate my sub, I would say no. If they offered to pay me to moderate, I would also say no because that would come with an expectation, or some kind of SLA or otherwise that I am not prepared to give. If Reddit came to you and tried to charge you to keep the subreddit running at all – as in, it'd be deleted from the web if the mods didn't pay – would that change the answer here? I have this suspicion that – for at least some smaller subs – it would. And for bigger ones, I would guess mods might not... perhaps because they guess Reddit is already making enough ad money off their work for that exchange to seem unfair.
- AndrewKemendo 3y ago
  > If Reddit came to you and tried to charge you to keep the subreddit running at all – as in, it'd be deleted from the web if the mods didn't pay – would that change the answer here? I have this suspicion that – for at least some smaller subs – it would. Only speaking for myself and not the rest of the mod team but I would still say no