Why just moderating? In a sense, it's every action you do that adds value to the site by drawing people in or improving their experience.<p>When users write a comment (such as what I'm writing right now on Hacker News), they are acting as writers who generate text for people to read. When they submit a link, they are locating content for people to read. When they upvote or downvote, they are acting somewhat like editors by helping to curate content.<p>In traditional media (a newspaper, for example), these functions would typically be performed by paid staff. In social media, it doesn't work that way.<p>But then the whole point of social media is to interact with other people. And interaction is two-way. You could argue that the value users receive from interacting is the reason they come to the site. And consuming content is part of that value, but <i>you could also argue that being heard</i> is part of the value you <i>receive</i> as a user.<p>When I do any of any of these things, am I doing labor by giving up my valuable time in service of the business? Or am I receiving value because the site allows me to be heard? Maybe the answer is both. Probably we should look at every aspect of the transaction.<p>Continuing the newspaper comparison, look at letters to the editor. Does anyone argue that people who write letters to the editor are unpaid volunteers? Not that I know of, because everyone understands that people write those letters because they want their opinion to be heard. So even in traditional media there's a little precedent for this.
Seems like there's also a good case for Reddit moderators to not be volunteers as well. To be honest I've always thought the community moderated model has seemed like somewhat of a loophole that was eventually going to be closed. It's having your cake and eating it too. IMHO you can either have UGI with a professional moderator team OR you can have professionally made content with no moderator team.
This would break a lot more services, including a substantial number of Open Source projects and communities (specifically, any that are primarily run by a company rather than a non-profit).
I would have thought for this to be true, both the company and volunteer would need to be in NY state. IIRC I don't need to extend my NY labour obligations to my Californian employees (however as a NY company I would still be required to follow Californian labour laws with regards to employees there).
Wouldn’t social networks fall under a similar category? I get that they are different but there is a lot of overlap.<p>If they are in violation then I think the law needs to be updated.
A bunch of non-lawyers taking a tiny chunk of law in isolation and speculating about whether something "seems illegal" based on it is really, really useless.<p>And this HN thread is just going to be even more of that.
AOL got hit by that years ago.[1]<p>[1] <a href="https://priceonomics.com/the-aol-chat-room-monitor-revolt/" rel="nofollow">https://priceonomics.com/the-aol-chat-room-monitor-revolt/</a>
I read through the comments specifically to see how long it would be until someone recommended the question be closed as off topic.<p>Was not disappointed.
What if a moderator is a H1B or F1 holder, or any other foreign nationals who are not authorized to work for SE?<p>Will they have to quit being a moderator immediately? Accepting payment from SE would definitely be violating immigration laws.
This raises some serious questions for anywhere with user/volunteer based content/moderation. Sites like Reddit operate on a model very similar to Stack Exchange, and any user-moderated forum that runs ads to pay for hosting/maintenance costs would seem to have the same issues.<p>It also raises questions about the status of Instagram influencers, you-tube personalities, or anyone on a platform that derives it's value from those it hosts but does not treat/pay them as employees.<p>Even games with user-generated/managed content. If a game developer is paid for generating content, why would the create of such user-generated content not qualify?<p>Virtually anywhere someone is doing something that they arguably could be paid for would seem subject to a law like this.
It is just one of the many aberrations that we lived with without noticing.<p>Our digital era, that has only started will pin point those aberrations in people's heads. Until enough of us branch off the regulations and national business laws entirely.<p>It's just a matter of time imo.
> except for a short term recreational or amusement event run by that organization.<p>Looking at the recent developments at stack exchange, it fits "Amusement event".
Ban Stack Exchange in NY state. Problem solved.<p>On serious note (and to avoid pitchfork holding HN mods) : May be it violates NY labour law under some interpretation, but that is an indication that the law is not well thought through and kills innovation.
When people complain that a labour law will kill innovation most people tend to dismiss those suggestions. Well here it is now.
I am not whole opposed to the idea that companies that extract value from content created by their users should be forced to operate as non-profits that operate for the public good.<p>The biggest drawback I see is that this could lead to large scale lobbying to greatly reduce the limitations placed on sich non-profits.
While we're discussing Stack Overflow's legal situation:<p>- Users have raised $9000 to defend a volunteer moderator from defamation by Stack Overflow employees: <a href="https://www.gofundme.com/f/stop-stack-overflow-from-defaming-its-users" rel="nofollow">https://www.gofundme.com/f/stop-stack-overflow-from-defaming...</a><p>- Stack Overflow illegally changed the content license without permission from authors (Creative Commons allows such license changes for adaptations but not collections such as Stack Exchange) and refuse to clarify their legal justification (do they feel they have the right to change to any license they choose?): <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/333089/stack-exchange-and-stack-overflow-have-moved-to-cc-by-sa-4-0" rel="nofollow">https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/333089/stack-exchan...</a><p>- Their general counsel appears to have left the company a little before all of this happened: <a href="https://chat.meta.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8015437#8015437" rel="nofollow">https://chat.meta.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/80154...</a>