Written by Nei Nguyen
The following essay is solely based on my own observation and knowledge, with some personal research and experiences.
Before I get any deeper into the matter, I am well aware that many communities are entirely fan-based, and the owners of those communities themselves don’t make a dime from what they do. This post is made to strictly talk about larger influencers, brands and companies who run their own official communities and/or platforms.
I don’t think many people who are on the Internet these days need an introduction to platforms like Youtube, Discord or Twitch. Most of us follow influencers, creators, companies or brands with huge followings. Most of these entities naturally create and maintain their own communities/follower bases, some with impressive numbers up to hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of members. Of course, it would be impossible for those servers to manage such huge communities on their own.
That’s where the mods come in.
Their tasks range from managing the community overall to keeping mundane conversations alive so the platforms can remain active. They maintain an order for a crowd of strangers who gather together based on as little as a single point of mutual interest. They keep the people informed with the latest news, they engage with the audience on a personal level and many are available even at the oddest of hours to, for lack of better words, do their jobs.
And the majority of them don’t make any money from it.
Before you read any further, I know many, if not most of these admins and mods are volunteers, and they do it for the love of the community and/or brand itself. They’re passionate about what they do, and that’s never a bad thing.
Except when it is.
What I find curious is that while the entities make money from the community surrounding them, their mods and admins don’t gain much benefit from it. Even though they, the mods, are the one managing the community these entities make money from. This is not to discredit the platform owners in any way, they are the ones who put out the main contents after all. But the importance of an admin or mod’s presence in such communities are irrefutable, and they have become essential to such virtual spaces.
Everyone who is part of a large community understands that in order to become a mod or admin of a community, there must be a huge amount of trust put into them, lest drama or absolutely disaster would happen. Take for example, if an admin is compromised, the community can take huge blows like loss of membership or valuable log disappearance in just a few clicks. These admins and mods also have to maintain a level of professionalism, regardless of how they might interact with their peers or the hours they operate at, to retain their position in the community.
I can go on, but that does sound like a job, right? Then why aren’t these mods and admins being paid for their work?
One’s first argument would be with how easily they can access the platforms and servers, it would be pretty difficult to pay them based on an hourly rate. However, (free) bots and AIs nowadays are so sophisticated, they can monitor a user down to the number of words they have posted on a server. Additionally, it would not take much to negotiate a commission rate, or set up a fee-per-task basis. The list goes on.
The second argument would be these admins and mods do it out of their love and passion for the communities they are in. And while there is nothing wrong with that, I would also argue that they should get rewarded for their dedication. A single shout-out doesn’t feed anyone. How many of these volunteer mods and admins out there are struggling to make ends meet, while the brands (individuals or companies) they volunteer for are raking in money? It’s more common than you’d think, especially in the current economic climates.
An example that I can draw from is a Discord server I was part of. This server is an official server of an internationally successful online game, boasting an impressive 100k+ members with at least 9-10k active members at all time. The admins and mods of this server are mostly veteran players, who not only manage the server’s community at large, but are also incharge of writing extensive reviews of the game (which they pay to play) and adding valuable, free assets to the playerbase (guides, tier lists, highlights, videos, etc.). In order to gain a moderator position, a person has to apply for the opening and be interviewed by other admins and a representative of the company.
Sounds just like a job, right? But what about their compensation? Is access to the game’s testing realm, and the few privileges of being a moderator, enough?
Another example is an acquaintance of mine, who is a moderator for an influencer with about half a million followers on Youtube and a quarter million followers on Twitch. Now, I don’t speak with this acquaintance enough about the person they mod for, but with the bare minimum of digging around, it’s clear that the influencer has quite a few sponsorships and is affiliated with Twitch and Youtube. The influencer’s community boasts a rather impressive 2-3k active members at all time, among those are 3-5 active moderators during peak hours. Upon joining, the moderators are incredibly engaging. They always try to keep conversations going at all times, while taking care of announcements, hosting music streams, maintaining the channels and ensuring that all community members follow the guidelines. During my stay in the server, it was clear that the mods interacted with the community far more than the influencer did.
Of course these mods did all of it for free.
And those examples are just barely scratching the surface of what these volunteers have to deal with. A different acquaintance who is part of a large moderator and admin group on Discord has discussed the messes they and others had to deal with behind the scenes. They are oftentimes a lot darker than what the general community would know, with instances from something as simple as lies to serious crimes (stalking, sexual harrassment, abuse, etc.). These can involve everyone and anyone, from regular members of the community to the creators, or even the moderators themselves.
If I was terribly blunt, and I am, I’d say that being a moderator is being the first and last line of defence for a community and its creator. You are essentially being thrown into the waves with very little to no training, and no insurance should you drown.
Why does this happen?
Are the mods and admins resistant to being paid? Are they being blindsided by their own passion? Are the people who “employ” their help exploiting them?
With payments and valuable forms of compensation on the table, brands and creators would likely be more careful with which individual they would want to add to their team. Good moderators and admins would have more incentive to stay with the brand, and there would be less incidents among the higher hierarchy of the community.
But people don’t want to talk about it, as if the subject of repayment and paid labour is somehow taboo. In the words of one of the mods I spoke to, “creators don’t want to hear it, and mods are quick to brush it off, even though we all know we’d prefer it.”.
This topic isn’t something new. It is as old as the Internet, starting with online forums. The admins and moderators were never paid a dime, but they, some as young as 14, worked to manage whole communities for free, and wore that like badges of honour.
Fifteen, twenty years later, this hasn’t really changed. Most people who are doing it, do it for the love of their community or the admiration towards the brand they quote-on-quote work for. Somewhere along the way, they either grow weary of their roles, or life would take them elsewhere. Some might realise that they are, in fact, working for free, and walk away from it. Only for a new generation to fill their shoes and continue this strange cycle.
Nobody really wants to do anything about it. And so, it goes on.
What are your thoughts regarding this matter? Do you agree that the admins and moderators should be paid for the work they do? Or that particular line should stay as it is, a volunteer gig? Let me know in the comments.