By the same logic, YCombinator is "exploiting our free labor" through Hacker News. People write thoughtful comments, get nothing in return, and YC benefits from free publicity. Same for facebook posts, instagram, reddit, and every business that benefits from community and network effects.

Same for every video game that allows mods, custom levels, and so on. The only difference is that Minecraft users make no money at all for their efforts. How terrible! Poor children!

Either that, or people just enjoy being creative, making things is fun, and it's okay for kids to just enjoy making things and sharing them with each other, even if (oh, gasp!) the business that built the engine benefits from it. And being able to make any money from this at all is just a nice bonus.

> The only difference is that Minecraft users make no money at all for their efforts.

Minecraft dev. here, not strictly true. We have a pretty bustling marketplace full of paid and free content (maps, skins, etc.) but the process to release such content right now is pretty hands-on and not suitable for non-adults.

I beg to differ. HN is free because the contributors and audience provide a significant input funnel for founders, employees, and investors who directly participate in the YC economy. It's a recruitment and promotional tool for all three groups.

However, YC does not charge people to play HN in the way that Roblox charges for that game. No one is counting my minutes on HN and sending someone a payment, or a bill. There is no direct monetization of my UGC.

Mod.io is a gaming add-on (for mods) that also has no in-platform direct monetization of UGC assets. Of course, the games that use mod.io do it because having UGC at all brings the right kind of players and those players do pay.

So it is possible to make money, have UGC, and not be exploitative. I don't think Roblox can say that's where they are right now.

Most of these kids are just sharing games with their friends... like posting a video to youtube.

Free content maybe, but not free labor exactly IMO.

It's labor regardless of how much money you make off of it, though I think maybe you mean that they're little games that aren't the result of much effort?

Is YouTube getting free labor when I upload a video?

I feel like the exchange there is not about labor...

Yes it is. That is what they make their money off of, the difference between what they earn off of the labor of the video creators and the money they pay out. If nobody uploaded videos, youtube could not sell attention just like if no steelworkers arrived, the steel mill can not sell steel. That applies to all social media/user generated content platforms.

Now, you might argue that this does not feel like labor because it's more voluntary than labor usually is. Which is totally correct and exactly why this industry is so lucrative.

Not sure why you were downvoted but you're right. YouTube, in a total inversion of the TV business model, doesn't pay creators for anything until after it's been monetized -- and then they take a cut first. The cut is so early in the process that millions of videos are monetized and the creators are not even aware, much less paid.

This is the reverse of the Hollywood TV model where you paid creators first and then tried to monetize the content you owned. It's certainly still labor to create it. The only things that have changed are the ownership, licensing, and payment stream.

Youtube creators can take their content elsewhere, at any time I believe. Traditional TV studios have longer term contracts and there are often more folks involved than lone YouTubers and their patrons.

They can take their content, but not their audience, making the whole thing rather useless. The only thing that enables that in film is the relative neutrality of cinemas and streaming platforms.

I feel like that really distorts my relationship / expectations with YouTube and just turns just about anything into 'labor'.

Yes, anything that takes the work of a person (making a video, writing a game, writing a blog) is labor.

You skipped the "free" part.

YouTube givea you "free" labor by hosting your video.

That’s not labor. At least not in any meaningful sense. No human is doing any work specifically to host your video.

I don't think recognizing it as labor needs to change how you feel about doing it at all. I'm doing labor that makes HN more monetarily valuable right now by writing replies and I'm obviously fine with that. And as to almost everything being labor in some way... well, that's the world we live in for better or worse.