Ironically, the thing that made me realize just how much free labor I was providing for Reddit as a moderator wasn’t when a fellow mod quit the site because of how much free labor they were providing.
It was when Reddit offered a bunch of mods an absolutely pathetic “moderator appreciation gift” a year or two back.
Before that, I was still perfectly happy telling myself it wasn’t labor, but just a way of giving back to the hobbyist communities I was part of.
@jepyang A very similar situation happened on the site Habitica in December. The unpaid moderators stepped down as a result of something else, and then realised how much unpaid work we were giving a company that was profiting off it. We did so out of love and without regret at the time, but looking back -- wow.
It can be really sad when it's a community you love and when you've invested yourself into it; are you doing OK?
@shanaqui Thanks, I’m doing alright with it. I had already been mostly off of Reddit for a few months now, for a lot of reasons that go beyond unpaid labor. So I’m actually grateful in a way because the current drama gave me a push to make a clean break.
But yeah, it’s wild how well these companies are able to abstract away the free labor that goes into them. :/
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Nicky