Is it ethical to commercialize the labor of hobbyist volunteers?

[internet]

This is a concept that comes up in a lot of different ways and I was wondering about the opinions of my fellow smogonauts.

To name some examples that help illustrate the concept: Mario maker, little big planet, a large part of youtube and even fan sites and social media have a business model that consists of convincing hobbyists to volunteer their creative labor, making a level, article or really anything, and then either presenting this to the audience as a product or plastering advertisements onto it.

The side that says "yes this is fine" is pretty simple to see: the hobbyists volunteers volunteer all this work. Therefore it is ethical - and something could be said about the labor and upkeep costs of a product like mario maker or a website, which could be seen as adequate compensation to the creator. To add to this, it's obviously not economically viable to pay every contributor anything resembling a meaningful recompense.

Of course, there is an argument to be made that this isn't ethical: You make money by convincing people, often teens or even preteens, to spend countless hours doing work off of which you profit. It's often possible to identify individuals who are clearly going above and beyond for businesses like this for no pay other than some manner of follower count or achievement system - obviously you can't compensate everyone who pitches in a few minutes of work, but when someone dedicates a full time job's worth of time and quality, maybe an exception should be made...

Personally, I'm somewhat uncertain about this. I lean towards "yes, it is ethical" but think it depends on the specific case a lot as well. I'm curious what ya'll think?

 

[Nix_Hex]

Honestly, the first time I even thought of this being an ethical issue is when Great Sage temporarily became human and used windows calculator to compute how much user chaos supposedly earns off the backs of slaves in the great C&C plantation. The question didn't really linger in my mind for too long though. I had spent a lot of time doing GP and writing articles with full understanding that my payment was pixels and that my final, and most desired, achievement was a site staff badge. I never tricked myself into thinking that Smogon would benefit me monetarily one day because I'm not a coder. I also never believed that chaos owed me or any other contributor a paycheck. This site was free to join and there was no interview (the GP test was easy to anyone whose first language is English and was able to graduate junior high school). No one ever demanded anything of me and if I had to go inactive, all I had to do was tell a badge leader "hey dude i'm gonna be away for a while, please don't alum my badges" and that was it. You could actually say that me not receiving a paycheck is what indirectly led to me quitting the site. I eventually got a job that didn't afford me the time to contribute as much as I used to, and overall I favored sleeping or playing music in my free time rather than grammar checking articles. But not for a moment was there any bitterness toward Smogon not paying my bills. This is only the perspective of a former C&C contributor though; I know TD's have a lot of crap to deal with that includes unwarranted hate from the players and actual constraints on the their personal time other than "hey implement these QC checks when you have a chance."

Of course, there is an argument to be made that this isn't ethical: You make money by convincing people, often teens or even preteens, to spend countless hours doing work off of which you profit. It's often possible to identify individuals who are clearly going above and beyond for businesses like this for no pay other than some manner of follower count or achievement system - obviously you can't compensate everyone who pitches in a few minutes of work, but when someone dedicates a full time job's worth of time and quality, maybe an exception should be made...

I'm curious to know if these companies have used this partially as a recruitment technique for new devs? I'm not a business guy or a gamer so I don't know how to gauge it, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are contributors who are doing so with the hopes of getting hired or to add to their CV. The prospect of a career is what drives some parents to put their kids through 12+ years of sports, dance, community theater, or music. I'd argue that Mario Maker is more fun than all of those things, and wouldn't put it past millennial parents letting their kids contribute with that prospect in mind. Of course the big difference is that the NHL is not sponsoring my city junior hockey league, and no one from Hollywood is sponsoring community theaters.

 

[Bughouse]

Great Sage, is that you?

 

[Tmi489]

its in the terms of service so its got to be ok, right?
people get "paid" in terms of utility (fun, a sense of purpose, and potentially fame) and should get in to things like mario maker for that; esp since they use assets of lets say nintendo
for yt/socials that is different though you get paid largely for fame rather than for content and that is pretty ehhh but that's pretty hard to change and content that isn't seen... isn't seen (useful)