are good examples of how companies will just create a role for unpaid labor with high social-capital or cultural influence opportunities instead of solving the problems they've created or even taking ownership for it.
this also describes the Microsoft support forum with excellent SEO but the forum regulars are all the kind of people who haven't yet managed to formulate an acceptable StackOverflow answer or they'd have left for there already. But there's no real social capital associated with being a Microsoft Approved Forum Answer Rando, unless I'm missing something involving other countries.
See also how Bluesky said from the get go “we won’t do shit for moderation beyond the barest of minimums, all the rest is up to you, the users” and users are doing free moderation work for them.
right, and moderation there is so load bearing that people are paid in social capital for their unpaid labor, social capital that escallates moderation to factional fights because largest rallied base wins the public opinion battle. it's such a bad pattern of corporate shirking because it amplifies preexisting social issues by handing power to people who have enough free time to donate it, on top of the labor exploitation part
see also: almost every discord community's unpaid staff if they're over 50 members or so, who have to deal with huge amounts of bot spam and scams.
steam curators aren't in as bad of a position, but it's still a thing where like, the reason they have to exist is that steam has done little to actually fix the thing where the platform is flooded with games that are either half finished or just there for the cash (or the 9 millionth gatcha gambling knockoff) with no real filtering or vetting mechanism.
before that, they were bloggers with way more personal control but way less reach. I'm not one so I can't say if the tradeoff is worth it or not, but you lose control and ownership in that leap and valve knows it
