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Comment by harshreality | Hacker News Reader

Moderators are doing it out of their own self interest, too. They're not doing it for money, so if they aren't enjoying it they can quit with zero repercussions, right?

ETA: So because of the psychic toll that it may or may not take on volunteer moderators, moderating for free for a for-profit company is illegal?

I guess I can understand this: It's half protecting people from getting into an unhealthy psychological trap where they're on a hamster wheel for a for-profit company but their reward is continued volunteer status rather than income. And it's half forcing for-profit companies to redistribute wealth by mandating that essentially no labor shall be free.

Unfortunately that hurts people who, with their eyes open from the beginning, want to volunteer and who don't care that the organization is making money from it. It also hurts companies by shrinking their labor pools for tasks that could potentially be shifted to volunteers.

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Well by that logic you could say the same thing about retired people that take part time jobs just so they have something to do every day.

They're not necessarily doing it for the money, and most states in the US allow you to quit at any time without repercussions, but it'd still be illegal to have them work for free.

It's more about whether the person is doing 'employee-like' duties and how much control the company has over the person's actions that determines whether they should be classified as an employee or not.

Users can come and go as they please, and post as infrequently as they like. Moderators, however, must post with a certain frequency or risk being demoted.

Well, it's like you're saying volunteer work should never exist. You absolutely have employee-like duties at the volunteer soup kitchen and basically any volunteer outfit.

If someone really is just doing something to keep themselves busy and they are perfectly happy not being paid, then that seems like a fair deal to me. I've done that when my buddy started a bar at the beach. I would help him take orders while I sat down there and he got some intermittent help. What's the matter? Groveling for money changes the entire relationship into something that I do not want.

I think you have to make the case that there's some sort of exploitation going on. I could see how you'd make that argument regarding a 16yo "intern" who bought your bullshit that they are bussing your tables 18 hours a day for "work experience". But you lost me on your own example. Let's say, suggesting that a retired millionaire who voluntarily takes orders at a bar for four hours a day for fun is being exploited unless they're paid $2.15/hr like the other staff.

The critical distinction here is that a soup kitchen is not a for-profit venture, but Stack Exchange is.

It's certainly not a distinction users care about. And apparently it's not the distinction the law cares about either since it's clearly much more complex than that.

My forum is for-profit and users will line up around the block to be a moderator. Why is it that the only compensation we can wrap our heads around is money?

> Well, it's like you're saying volunteer work should never exist.

You're missing "at a for-profit company". Once you'd add that, I (and NY) would say "Yes". (But I'm not the GP).

Yes and that's pretty much the definition of volunteering too.

Volunteers get laws and protections to prevent exploitation, which is what the NY laws were probably created to prevent.

Turns out that the genuine and thorny question of free labor keeping Reddit/FB and other platforms alive is going to be tackled via NY laws.

(Yes, FB also has its own paid moderators and outsourced staff who suffer PTSD etc.)

I for one think this is a great conversation - moderating isn't cost less, and takes a toll on the moderators, for which there is little recognition.

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