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Comment by mreome | Hacker News Reader

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.

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.

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?

Virtually anywhere someone is doing something that they arguably could be paid for would seem subject to a law like this.

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I'm not a lawyer, but there is a common-sense difference between Stack Exchange and Reddit.

On Reddit, it's just a community having a discussion. The participants, even the moderators, are mainly involved in guiding a discussion, and Reddit just facilitates that.

On Stack Overflow, the moderators really are working directly on improving the site's content. They're practically unpaid editors.

> On Stack Overflow, the moderators really are working directly on improving the site's content. They're practically unpaid editors.

So do non-moderators. In fact, there are some users who do more work towards improving the site’s content (via editing, handling suggestions, etc.) than some moderators. In fact, “trusted users” have access to many of the same moderation tools as moderators, and editing content is actively encouraged (via functionality, badges …) for all users.

In many of the subreddits the mods are directly improving the site's contents through extensive manual filtering and moderation. Some subreddit mods also manually manage "flair" including various forms of "verification." There are may subreddits that would be effectively unusable due to spam and irrelevant content without such moderation. Some social media sites pay people to conduct this kind of filtering and curation, so it doesn't feel like a stretch to me to say Reddit mods might qualify here.

I'm not saying that there isn't a "common-sense" counter-argument to some of the cases I noted, but "common-sense" is a defense to be raised in court, the case is brought based on if the law could apply. In my mind that's troubling as it weaponizes the law in a way it could easily be abused.

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