Reddit mods discuss forming a union and suing for back pay
https://old.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/14bbznz/reddit_made_the_mistake_of_ignoring_its_core_users/Open linkView original on lemmy.ml536
Comments53https://old.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/14bbznz/reddit_made_the_mistake_of_ignoring_its_core_users/Open linkView original on lemmy.ml
Yeah, this seems very unlikely to go anywhere other than in gaining media attention (which is a fair aim to have at this point).
I don't think the point to to actually get paid. I think the idea is, as you said, media attention, as well as investor attention. Who's going to want to invest in a company that's trying to unionize?
did you really?
I'm glad I can see what instances people are from so I know whether or not to take them seriously.
maybe they should start a lemmy community to talk about it... like ![email protected]
Seems like a rather large shitpost, but I encourage them to cause chaos by any means necessary (feasibility be damned).
They should sue reddit for violating GDPR too (if anyone that deleted posts/comments on their profile and reddit restored them is European)
I'm not seeing any serious suggestions of that there. Looks more like hypothetical talk.
I actually had a similar thought to that yesterday. Could moderators be classified as employees for the work they do?
I think you would have a massive uphill struggle to argue Reddit's moderators are employees in court. Without that no back pay and no union.
no need to classify as employees to form organised resistance. Look at the French Resistance in WW2, the American War of Independence!!!!
Correct no need to form a union for resistance.
Unions just have special protected legal protection that could be utilized in a legal battle or to threaten legal battles in order to get concessions.
Right now all there is is the threat of lawsuits, that Reddit will probably win, in order to threaten more lawsuits. The negotiation power to get concessions there is limited at best.
This probably won't get very far but no harm trying and if it actually does work there is a ton to be gained
Being that the message that Spez was trying to give off at times was that developers weren't paying their fair share, I think this gives the a great example of how Reddit essentially doesn't pay their fair share. They aren't creating the content, and they aren't paying the mods to "manage" the content.
Its crazy how this was just allowed to continue for almost 20 years with nothing happening reddit trying to ipo and indirectly creating lemmy is really the best outcome possible
Lol. Good luck finding a lawyer to that that case. I'm with the mods but I assume this a joke that got out of hand.
I assume they're realistic enough to know that this really won't go anywhere and that the whole point of the discussion is simply to make some noise.
There's also something to be said about using the system to fight the system. We're taught civil rights were won through peaceful protest and getting attention, but we don't live in that fairy tale world
Those people who had sit ins didn't do it for attention, they did it because once they were in the system for breaking a law, they could challenge the law. They didn't do it once or twice, they tied up the court systems
The black Panthers also played a significant role, but the only analog here is anonymous, and the panthers were more of a deterrent to using police to do punitive raids
The US government didn't want to end segregation and it wasn't like the public at large liked the idea, they used the third path - you use just position yourself so either they're forced to stop brushing you off and in doing so give you legitimacy through escalation or negotiation, or they just give in and you achieve your goal
It has legal precident. There was a class action lawsuit, with payout, when AOL changed the chatrooms for moneys and the chatrooms mods were able to organize and argue for all their past unpaid work. Unpaid workers or volunteers only work as free labor when the business isn't selling something. When money is involved there are different rules with dept of labor and everything. I don't know the specific details, but yeah a class action lawsuit of this type has happened before with a payout. I'm sure they can find plenty of lawyers that want a class action payout.
Out of principle I support this, but I very much doubt it will ever succeed.
I don't think they actually think they'll get backpaid, it's more the principle of the thing. You're saying Reddit isn't earning the money it should, how about all the free work mods have done over the years to make Reddit into anything worth monetising?
They all ran Reddit into the ground and made it a husk of its former self. Funny joke BANNED, not a democrat BANNED. Oh you don’t love power-tripping, that’s definitely a BANNING. Fuck em all.
You do realise that those powertripping mods are the ones getting the spotlight. The quiet ones that sweeping the rules-violating posts, bigotry, spambots, pornbots, too frequent reposts, etc.
Are just staying behind the curtain ensuring the posts that reached the frontpage fits with the forum.
But they do it for free 🤣
It would be really cool but these were the guys that backboned after being threatened to checks notes not being able to work for free.
I would rather have mods in place that were a part of the blackout than have new mods that instated directly by reddit.
It was either they ended the blackout and maliciously complied, or they would be removed and have replacements put in that would do whatever they were told.
Well that's kinda ridiculous
Ridiculous enough to warrant engagement though, isn't it?
Won't work. It's a volunteer, unpaid position. They have no legs to stand on in this case. The only real course of action they have is just not giving Reddit their service at all. Stop going there, stop giving them clicks and traffic.
I replied to this type of comment in another thread. Reddit is governed by California law. There may be something here, since reddit was benefiting off of free labor. Volunteering might not actually matter, since moderators were putting in actual hours for the benefit of reddit, while not receiving anything back. Without mods, reddit wouldn’t have the power to moderate all the subs, thus, reddit relied on mods to do unpaid company work which would have cost reddit millions per year if they were to pay moderators. I think there’s a thin case here.
The real power would be in the union anyway. If they could gather the majority of mods and they actually went through with a strike, it would be a huge test for Reddit. They would have to bring in a ton of scabs or cave to the mods. Scabs may work in the king run, but it would also destroy every community they did it to.
So the real question is whether these mods will actually act as a union or will it's members buckle in fear of being replaced.
I would guess that, since their livelihoods aren't on the line, mods would be far less likely to buckle than typical workers - if they can get organized in the first place.
Not sure we need a formal union, just an absence of powerhungry idiots who are more than happy to replace the mods with integrity that Reddit removes. If no ones willing to step up they really can’t remove mods in a meaningful way.
There's a lot of jurisprudence around firing someone for striking if it's a union affair. The way Reddit has started going nuclear replacing mods is exactly like union-busting minus the union.
It might be easier to show/argue some sort of business relationship between mods and reddit if there's a formal union. Who knows if it would stand up in court, but imagine if reddit got hit with an injunction regarding forcing a big sub to reopen. A dozen more of the biggest subs might close immediately in solidarity.
the moment reddit starting threatening to fire them and take over THEIR communities, ut became a job.
Eh I see what you mean but technically reddit has always been up front about it being volunteer, and they did give them the choice to step down instead of reopening. So I can't see it being held up in court
But I'm NAL
Well you can sue anyone for almost any reason. It's not really about if they win or lose (obviously winning would be big for workers rights and bad for Reddit corporate)
The real question is does the judge throw out the case up front. If they don't, the case would go on for months and might reveal some uncomfortable things.
Good luck to them. I dislike Reddit as much as the next guy, but this whole thing doesn't stand a chance. You do volunteer work nobody even asked you to do and then demand money? How does that make any sense at all?
They are probably not gonna get backpay, but what this could achieve is to force reddit's hand in legally recognizing mod's work from that point on and giving the mods more standing than they have now.
At the very worst, it sends a message and helps to continue bringing to light reddit's shitty practices.
About as much sense as building a company off free volunteer labor and then acting like you own those volunteers and the money they helped you earn
It doesn't take a ton of effort to make a website and an app, Lemmy is already hockey-sticking off entirely volunteer everything.
If trump can run and win on sowing chaos, why not use that tactic and see how far it can go. I say go for it.
Tech bros do love to "move fast and break things". Let's see how much they really like it.
Excellent. Organising at grassroots will allow us to SMASH the rotten edifice of reddit!!
mods just want that nil money
oh this is spicy
TBH, I think Spez did most of that himself. Reddit users just don't like what he said and how he said it. Too much disrespect and too many blatant lies. Why would I want to hang around a community like that?
It would be interesting to see them go forward with this. I know that laws vary for jurisdictions, but likely most concentration of the mods are in the USA. I am not familiar with laws on this, but with a cursory google search, it would appear that you can't volunteer to work for a private sector for profit business in where your work provides value to the company; that it would need t be a non-profit charity. Am I misunderstanding this?
https://webapps.dol.gov/elaws/whd/flsa/docs/volunteers.asp#:~:text=Under%20the%20FLSA%2C%20employees%20may,services%20to%20public%20sector%20employers.
Fuckin lol
I don't think these people understand how the law works lol
Also a union for what? Posting on internet forums? Sssuuuurree...
I'm not sure you understand how the law works. Read "Glatt v. Fox Searchlight Pictures Inc." (https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-2nd-circuit/1706417.html), where unpaid interns who worked on the film "Black Swan" sued the production company. The interns argued that they were actually employees and thus entitled to minimum wage and overtime under the Fair Labour Standards Act (FLSA) and New York labour law. The court agreed with the interns, finding that they were essentially regular employees.
To contrast with an unsuccessful case, I present "Wang v. The Hearst Corporation" (https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-2nd-circuit/1882161.html), where unpaid interns at various magazines published by Hearst sued for wages. The court used a "primary beneficiary test" to determine whether the interns or the company were the primary beneficiaries of the arrangement. The court found that the interns were the primary beneficiaries, so they were not entitled to wages.
I think it would be hard for Reddit to argue that subreddit moderators are the primary beneficiaries of their labour, meaning if the mods unionise and bring a case, they might actually be successful.
There is a vast, vast difference between interns that are officially working in the company and volunteers that are just using the platform. I think it's impossible to argue that mods are employees and it's stated time and time in Reddit's terms that they can ban people and remove content as they please since it's their platform. This isn't any different than other social media. They're legally allowed to demote mods and control subs.
Please cite the case(s) where someone lost a case like this because the courts distinguished between "intern" and "volunteer". The law does not care about labels, it cares about substance. According to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), a volunteer is defined as an individual who performs hours of service for a public agency for civic, charitable, or humanitarian reasons, without promise, expectation or receipt of compensation for services rendered.
However, the FLSA makes a clear distinction between work performed for public service, religious or humanitarian objectives and work performed for a private entity or for-profit organization. It states that "employees may not volunteer services to for-profit private sector employers." If a volunteer is performing work that is integral to a for-profit company's business activities, it can be argued that they are functioning as an employee and should be compensated accordingly. If a volunteer is performing work that is similar to work performed by paid employees, is working for a significant amount of time, or is under the direct control of the company, these factors could potentially support a claim that the volunteer is actually an employee.
If former Reddit moderators can convince the court that they were:
then the court might well find that they were effectively employees and are owed back wages. Since Reddit themselves have admitted how important active, experienced moderators are to the platform's overall usability, it's going to be very difficult for the company to argue that moderation services aren't worth paying for, and they'll have to find an entire other crop of people willing to moderate the site for no pay if they lose the current mods. It could take years for the case to even be heard, and if Reddit starts paying for moderation for any reason in that time, it's going to look very bad for their case because that is a practical admission that moderation is a job that the company needs to have performed and thus should be paid.
The fact that Reddit is a for-profit corporation is a big fucking deal in this case. There are effectively no circumstances under which volunteer labour is allowed for private, for-profit companies in the US, so this is not nearly as clear-cut as so many people seem to think.
When reddit threatened to fire them and take over THEIR communities, it became a job and they became liable and employer
I couldn't even continue reading pasted the first comment. Ridiculous