- cross-posted to:
- reddit@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- reddit@lemmy.ml
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The terms of service for reddit are based on California law. Based on liberal Laws of California, I would venture to guess that there is some grounds for back pay. I was wondering about this with all the discussion around volunteer moderators.
Similar to Uber drivers, the test for independent contractors is pretty difficult to meet in California nowadays. So I believe there is a solid case (cough class action cough). Fuck reddit. They deserve all the backlash and a mod class action for backpay would be legendary.
I don’t understand how mods could argue they deserve backpay. They are volunteers, are we saying that all volunteers can sue for backpay?
It’s more about the principle. He’s saying that they can’t provide reddit for free, they’re not a charity. But with the same logic, should mods work for free, since they’re also not a charity?
they don’t have a contract, they’re screwed.
Good luck with that lol
This will go nowhere, however if it were to try to go somewhere, Mods would need to enter legally binding agreements to abide by union rules.
That meaning, if the union votes to private your stuff, to shut down scripts, etc, you can be held liable to some extent or another.
Right now, these protests are largely people pussyfooting, jumping in, and when the water gets a little hot, screaming “oh no” and hopping out. This cannot happen if you want to effectively collectively bargain. Scabs cannot be amongst those united. There can be no question on loyalties.
It’s not gonna happen, but it’d be hella interesting if it did.
Realistically, I don’t think this will go anywhere. While Reddit’s use of free moderators to do the bulk of the work might raise eyebrows, they’ve been very clear about the fact that moderation is a volunteer effort, rewarded with “status” as a moderator and greater control of the communities moderated.
However…
Going forward, Reddit moderators should absolutely collectively bargain for pay, refusing to moderate unless Reddit pays them fairly for their efforts. I think I saw somewhere that the average moderator spends around 20 hours a week moderating (could be remembering wrong) so asking for equitable pay would be a way to deprive Reddit of millions of dollars of unpaid labor. Worst that happens there for the fediverse is that they agree, though.
refusing to moderate unless Reddit pays them fairly for their efforts
What will really happen: new mods will be put in their place instead, willing to do the dirty work for free because they don’t get the protest. They will probably be worse than the people they replaced and they will not defend their communities against the further changes the website will bring. This will kill Reddit as we know it, but it won’t happen overnight, it will take months or even years, every community slowly draining away its goodwill while users organize new communities elsewhere, be it Lemmy or wherever else. At that point, Reddit will become a news aggregator or a boring social media websites closer to tiktok than it is to the discussion centered place it is now. And we won’t be there to really see it under that new guise, just like I had to check to see that digg.com has now become a sad flipboard clone.
They don’t have the labour available to just replace every single moderator. Some subs take teams of dozens just to somewhat function.
Not a bad idea. Even in the case it doesn’t have a solid legal ground (I’m not a lawyer so I don’t know), I believe it’s still a good way to scare off investors and show what happens when you s*hit too much on your own free labor.
Apparently last year spez (or reddit admins) sent out a message to mods saying they are expected to work X number of hours a week.
A volunteer or contractor chooses their own hours. Specifying they must work a certain number of hours per week or be removed sure makes them look like employees under the law.
But I haven’t seen that message so I don’t know all the details.
That being said I don’t know why so many mods don’t want to give up their currently unpaid position when reddit is hellbent on making it more difficult for them. Let reddit figure it out and take your community elsewhere.
Considering how they couldn’t keep up the protest going because of threats of removal as moderators, I highly doubt they will achieve anything. People apparently need Reddit and they’ll do whatever to have it no matter the cost.
Yeah I don’t understand why some subs didn’t migrate to a Lemmy instance and then shut the sun down. Like, antiwork and workreform are primed to be a federated community out of billionaires control…
I think we might see more migration after the Reddit apps die on July 1st
I did that. Granted, it was a tiny subreddit for a small game, but I did it.
Also, if you like 2D Metroidvanias with touches of horror and philosophy, I recommend Ghost Song. https://lemmy.world/c/ghostsong edit: how the heck do you make a lemmy-style community link, like how you could do /r/ghostsong?
You can’t make a friendly link yet. It’s probably the #1 requested feature right now but people are still trying to hammer out the best way to implement it in the repo. People aren’t really agreeing how far it should go and trying to keep parity with mastodon is being a sticking point.
