Feudalism had a mutual benefit. And feudalism isn’t sharecropping. Residents of the manor had some protection from the lord and the kingdom as compared to peopl

Feudalism had a mutual benefit. And feudalism isn’t sharecropping. Residents of the manor had some protection from the lord and the kingdom as compared to people outside of that system. Would I want to live as a peasant? No… but that was the human condition for a long time. And a small freeholder wasn’t necessarily better off than a serf at various points in history. Sharecroppers are just tenants, who often get trapped using the “company store” (ie captive suppliers etc) and make little or nothing. YouTube is not the same as Reddit. A YouTube creator benefits from the platform and is paid for performance. It more like a record label type model. Reddit is different - as you said, moderators get no economic benefit. They just are the petty kings of a message board, and do a bunch of work for the company for free. Reddit’s problem is there has never been a moat or a business. Their api made it easy for google to index them and gave them outsized influence. But they got too much investment and always had an ineffective team incapable of developing a coherent strategy to deliver the returns required to the investors. Examples are everywhere… old.reddit.com should not exist. If IPO was the path, it shouldn’t be a huge porn platform.