- 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?
Pretty sure the courts will view volunteer work that enriches a non profit very differently from “volunteer” work that enriches a for profit enterprise.
they don’t have a contract, they’re screwed.
- JasSmith ( @JasSmith@kbin.social ) 4•1 year ago
California has many of laws on the books which grandfather workers under various statutes of de facto employment. Even contracts can be voided. No contract is necessary for an employment relationship to exist.
and reddit has it in their TOS that no one who is a mod is an employee of reddit.
That’s a point in favor of reddit, but a small one. As my company’s labor lawyer enjoys saying, “You can’t contract around the law.” Meaning, an agreement can be nullified by a court that finds the agreement is in violation of a law.
Right, but you also can’t create a work agreement where one was explicitly denied. It’s like mowing your neighbors lawn then asking them to pay you, but they told you they wouldn’t pay you if you did it before you started. It’s the same with the 3rd party app devs too. While I think reddits actions are insane and detrimental to the health of the site, they are fully in their right to deny those devs access to their API and their site as a whole.
It’s a bit more complex than that. Reddit hires staff to do moderation. If moderation was done solely by users, and never by paid staff, your analogy would hold more water. However, because there is a mix of paid and unpaid labor doing the same tasks, there is enough gray area that a court could weigh in either direction (although I think it is unlikely that one would find for the mods, personally).
A better analogy would be that reddit had a landscaping business, and hired some workers to do landscaping, and you just tagged along and did unpaid work for several years. Sure, the owner did tell you he wasn’t ever going to pay you for your work, and you agreed to that. But the owner sold and profited off the labor you provided alongside his paid laborers. He did this knowingly.
There may be a case there.Reddit hires staff to do moderation
and if your neighbor hires a lawn care service, you should be paid?
You sorta can. The difference in your scenario is that your neighbor doesn’t need you to mow their lawn, but Reddit requires moderators in order for the business of Reddit to function.
Here is a guide published by the state of California about whether someone should qualify as an employee of a company. Read through the first couple pages of checklists and ask yourself if a moderator fits the criteria they’re looking for.
For the first 3 questions, a “Yes” answer is an indictator that the person is an employee.
- Do you instruct or supervise the person while he or she is working?
- I would say that likely counts as a yes, because moderators have a code of conduct which is mandated by Reddit, and they must follow it in order to keep their jobs.
- Can the worker quit or be discharged (fired) at any time?
- Reddit does not have protections in place for moderators, who can be removed from their positions at any time. Likewise, moderators can walk from their job at any time.
- Is the work being performed part of your regular business?
- This is definitely a yes, because Reddit relies on subreddits for its business, and subreddits require moderators.
For the next 3 questions, a “No” answer indicates that the person is an employee and not an independent contractor.
- Does the worker have a separately established business?
- This is a bit of a gray area. For the majority of moderators, this would be a no at surface value, but some subreddits that concern a specific product/company sometimes have representatives from that company on the mod team. However another criteria of this category is that moderators have the ability to add/remove other moderators at their discretion, which is an indicator that they qualify as independent contractors and not employees. Should this go to trial, this will be an item that is argued.
- Is the worker free to make business decisions which affect his or her ability to profit from the work?
- This would likely be a no for most moderators. To expand further, one of the example criteria is whether the individual is free to utilize their own tools/resources to do their work, and Reddit limiting API access is specifically one example of this not being the case. But if the subreddit is a front for a business (as in, the subreddit’s primary purpose is to sell/support a paid product or service), it likely would not qualify.
- Does the individual have a substantial investment in their job which would subject him or her to a financial risk of loss?
- Similar to the above, I think this would be a no for most moderators. Reddit controls the platform and dictates what resources moderators are/aren’t allowed to utilize when doing their jobs, so there is no independent financial investment from the moderators that is at risk.
It’s not cut-and-dry, and I think that’s what might make this difficult to take to court, but the argument certainly exists and the case could at least result in better terms for how Reddit must work with their moderators.
Reddit requires moderators in order for the business of Reddit to function.
no they dont. they literally have a system to democratically promote or suppress posts.
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.
And that’s a perfectly acceptable outcome! If Reddit dies like Digg, Tumblr, and now Twitter have done, then I’m okay with that and I imagine that most of us here are too. If Reddit’s new mods are low quality, then illegal content will become more prevalent and they’ll risk, at the very least, public censure for their enabling of [insert illegal stuff here.] But you’re right… Reddit is not likely to die overnight. It’ll take time measured in years.
It’s funny because now Digg.com artcles might get 15 comments. I remember when it was an actual social media site and not just another blog. 😆
Unfortunately I’m sure there are enough anti-union reddit fans that would be more than happy to replace all the mods looking to unionize.
I want to see Reddit in legal trouble over this catastrophe as much as the next person, but I don’t think this poses any new problems for Reddit. The mods that are protesting are doing what hurts Reddit most already, and if they go too far they’ll be unceremoniously removed.
20 years ago in Hallissey et al v. America Online, Inc., AOL ended up settling for $15 million for 2000 “volunteers”. It’s not a perfect situation match, but there is some precedent (not in the legal sense, having been a settlement).
Good luck with that lol
I predict that going precisely nowhere. Mods are volunteers and, as such, do not have the rights of employees. The best thing they can do is simply quit.
First step, they’d need to sue for back pay. The tos probably have some legalese about binding arbitration so would need a good lawyer to figure that out. Once you can prove you were an unpaid employee then forming a union is possible u set US laws at least. It’s possible but would require a lot of legal work.
haha. i REALLY hope they do it.