Measuring the Monetary Value of Online Volunteer Work

TL;DR

This paper quantifies the monetary value of online volunteer content moderation work, revealing its significant economic contribution and potential implications for fair recognition and policy changes.

Contribution

It introduces a novel dataset and methodology to estimate the monetary value of online volunteer labor, specifically in content moderation.

Findings

Reddit moderators worked at least 466 hours daily in 2020.

The estimated annual value of volunteer moderation is approximately 3.4 million USD.

Highlights the substantial economic contribution of online volunteers.

Abstract

Online volunteers are a crucial labor force that keeps many for-profit systems afloat (e.g. social media platforms and online review sites). Despite their substantial role in upholding highly valuable technological systems, online volunteers have no way of knowing the value of their work. This paper uses content moderation as a case study and measures its monetary value to make apparent volunteer labor's value. Using a novel dataset of private logs generated by moderators, we use linear mixed-effect regression and estimate that Reddit moderators worked a minimum of 466 hours per day in 2020. These hours amount to 3.4 million USD a year based on the median hourly wage for comparable content moderation services in the U.S. We discuss how this information may inform pathways to alleviate the one-sided relationship between technology companies and online volunteers.