Online volunteers are a crucial labor force that keeps many for-profit systems afloat (e.g. social media platforms and online review sites). Despite their substantial role in upholding highly valuable technological systems, online volunteers have no way of knowing the value of their work. This paper uses content moderation as a case study and measures its monetary value to make apparent volunteer labor's value. Using a novel dataset of private logs generated by moderators, we use linear mixed-effect regression and estimate that Reddit moderators worked a minimum of 466 hours per day in 2020. These hours amount to 3.4 million USD a year based on the median hourly wage for comparable content moderation services in the U.S. We discuss how this information may inform pathways to alleviate the one-sided relationship between technology companies and online volunteers.
翻译:在线志愿者是一支重要的劳动力队伍,让许多盈利系统(如社交媒体平台和在线审查网站)保持活跃。 尽管在线志愿者在维护极有价值的技术系统方面扮演着重要角色,但他们无法了解他们的工作价值。 本文将内容温和作为案例研究使用,并衡量其货币价值,以显示志愿劳动力的价值。 我们使用主持人生成的私人日志的新数据集,使用线性混合效应回归,估计Reddit主持人在2020年至少每天工作466小时。 根据美国可比内容中值服务每小时平均工资计算,这些小时相当于每年340万美元。 我们讨论这一信息如何为减轻技术公司与在线志愿者之间的片面关系提供信息。