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Working for nothing: The social media scam
When was the last time an online media site, like the Huffington Post, told you they couldn’t pay you for the content you were offering them but, hey, they were giving you a platform to “build an audience around your personal brand” so you should be grateful? News flash, says David Carr in this column in the NY Times. They’re building value on your free labor.
[node:ad]When was the last time an online media site, like the Huffington Post, told you they couldn’t pay you for the content you were offering them but, hey, they were giving you a platform to “build an audience around your personal brand” so you should be grateful? News flash, says David Carr in this column in the NY Times. They’re building value on your free labor.
Claude Adams
February 18, 2011
A millennium ago – it seems,
A millennium ago – it seems, at times – I worked for free: that is to say I was paid in experience (and I was paid for a regular column).
Electronic media require enormous amounts of content – ditto “citizen journalism”. This is very well suited to people who need the ego gratification of seeing their name in print.
The fact is that the net has not yet had the big shakeout that will inevitably occur. For now, there is so much duplication as to be absurd. All that duplication requires constant new content, to be filled by the free labour of those willing to work for nothing. Wait for fifteen to twenty-five years and see how many major companies are left.
This great need for content will also run up against copyright issues. How many different ways can one talk about a recipe, a shoe, a haircut? How long before two or ten or a hundred unpaid contributors write something that is almost identical to someone else’s?
The worst aspect is that it cannot be stopped – and all the content-needy web companies know it. and the downward pressure on compensating writing is quite strong: more than a few sites let you “bid” on contracts for writing, editing etc. but it won’t be particularly useful for finding income because omeone in the third world will outbid you: five dollars goes much farther there than here.
Between the free writers and the third world’s underbidders, it’s a grim situation. Not to mention the evils of pagination, standartization of outlets in a media chain, and who-knows what else.