At some point you are the problem if you work for free for a commercial entity.
This neo-$whatever belief in that commercial entities can replace community run things can't die off soon enough.
This neo-$whatever belief in that commercial entities can replace community run things can't die off soon enough.
Maybe people are ok with companies making money from their free work as long as the company does not antagonize the people offering free services just to milk every drop of money from other peoples handwork.
It used to be that forum owners had to beg their users for money to keep the servers going. Which is also not a great situation. But now it seems like it swung completely in the other direction, with users having to beg the forum owners to keep/add things they use.
Exploitation, when it’s so voluntary, is definitely a dance that takes two. Both parties are responsible for the situation that arose. The abused party, of course, we can sympathize more with. But they could always have chosen and even today they can choose to not engage anymore.
But it doesn’t. Exhibit A: Reddit moderators. (Exhibit B: this thread, and this comment.)
If you find value in moderating, moderate. This is purely a problem of sour grapes—Reddit never pretended to be an Altman-esque non-profit.
Which isn't making it a better argument, since there are many reasons why online communities form where they do, and "community-run" platforms aren't necessarily an option.
This platform isn't "community-run" either, and yet the parent commenter is participating here (and thus is "the problem" too), so I think they should get off the high horse.
Sounds harsh, but this is the correct stance.
The free labour you provide is not only "your loss". There are second order effects: you effectively make it harder for others to compete with said commercial entity.
This includes salaried employees of competing companies whose wages you effectively press down. And even other volunteers and non-profits, because defending and sustaining their project in face of "free inputs, for-profit outputs" competition is that much harder. Community projects die because of this.
"Working for free for a commercial entity" is just a bad idea all around. You exploit yourself (whatever, your choice, you may be getting other kicks out of it) and harm others.
...which, according to you, is a "bad idea all around", since you exploit yourself and harm others.
So, why are you acting against your morals and judgement?
The town drunk telling you to hand the barkeep your keys does not detract from the validity of their point. Try to approach things from the strongest avenue possible, otherwise things devolve into guttersniping.
And the point is, at some point, you have to get it out there somewhere in order for it to have been said. The only concern I have with the points being made here; is the paradox of FLOSS. We must have a public, free and in the public trust corpus of software. Locking everything behind for profits just leads to computing definitely being inaccessible to most everyone. Yet look at all the value extraction bootstrapped on FLOSS stacks where companies get bootstrapped around the composition of a few primitives; but inevitably hooked by the caste of management/MBA types, or utilized as social engineering lever by governments. See social media, car manufacturers, IaaS now, finance companies, banks, etc ...
It is a most concerning trend.
Yes, that's the "other kicks out of it" above. Already covered.
More importantly:
> You just provided free content (a brief opinion piece) for publication on a commercial entity (HackerNews, run by YCombinator)... ...which, according to you, is a "bad idea all around", since you exploit yourself and harm others.
If HackerNews is indeed a PR branch of some commercial entity, then people posting here for free provide value (which is not to say any of my comments do…) to that entity. Potentially harming alternative forums, whether free or commercial. The point stands.
> So, why are you acting against your morals and judgement?
Good call. I guess I didn't perceive HN as for-profit. Perhaps OP's "At some point" is now, for me.
Props to you for consistency! No more questions.
Ideally, forums like this would be some sort of cooperative structure owned and run by those who wish.
I'd love to see r/AskHistorians break off as a co-op who earn their own money and use it to resource history-based activity. They put so much value in that others leech off.
I think the difference is that you created your own forum and community on Reddit under the pretense that it is yours. Reddit more or less sucked up the existing forums. And then Reddit throws more and more ads in your face and siezes control of the means of memeing.
HN seems to be run in a different way. Many of the old forums were run by commercial entities, but at the time they did not try to profit from the forums in such a in your face way.