Is Stack Exchange a type of exploitation? [duplicate]

Question

These sites ask for a professional level of research both in questions and answers. They are for-profit sites, but people are not paid for questions or answers.

So, is this a form of exploitation?

If, for whatever reason, somebody wants to spend time helping others to learn for free, why don't they do that for a non-profit site, for example improving articles in Wikipedia?

1. The question is about ethics, not law.
2. The answer should address the fact that some people are making a huge amount of money while the work is been doing for free by other people.
3. I also wonder if all of the site is purposefully designed for this to happen (the "rewards" system, the rules for a question to not be deleted...) which would make this site even more unethical.
4. Of course anybody is free to contribute or not and of course I won't contribute.

Answer 1

So, is this a form of exploitation?

Googling the meaning of exploitation gives "the action or fact of treating someone unfairly in order to benefit from their work.".

So yeah, that would make your question one of ethics, particularly your own ethics. What you do or don't consider fair is up to you. Based on that consideration, you can choose whether or not participation here would be in line with your personal ethics.

If, for whatever reason, somebody wants to spend time helping others to learn for free, why don't they do that in a non for-profit site, for example improving articles in wikipedia?

Again, it's up to personal ethics and decisions. Personally, I don't mind that these sites make money and Wikipedia doesn't have a page on exiting vim that I could theoretically improve.

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In response to the edit that almost invalidated this answer by adding more clauses and stuff:

(1) The question is about ethics, not law [...] (4) of course anybody is free to contribute or not and of course I won't contribute.

Well luckily I managed to answer those two above, so less work for me!

Kind of a spoiler though: you have contributed in the past and you just did so again by posting this post. You might want to re-evaluate your stance on nr. 4, or do better in sticking to it.

(2) The answer should address the fact that some people are making a huge amount of money while the work is been doing for free by other people

Not necessarily true. From how I always understood it, most of the public Q&A sites don't actually make money, except for the few that have advertisements. Instead, this answer outlines what does make money, and none of that is being done for free by other people.

(3) I also wonder if all the site is purposefully design for this to happen (the "rewards" system, the rules for a question to not being deleted...) which would make this site even more unethical

Since I debunked 2 already, no these sites aren't designed for "this" to happen.

Answer 2

Nobody charged me to help me learn what I know.

So, I pass the knowledge on freely, on a bunch of platforms, not just SE.

Some of those platforms barely cover their costs, and will vanish sooner or later because of it.

Some of those platforms do cover their costs, and good luck to them.

Some of those platforms make money, but not from the content I have contributed --SE falls into this category.

Why would I not share my knowledge here?

ETA:

Exploitation:

(1)the action or fact of treating someone unfairly in order to benefit from their work. e.g "the exploitation of migrant workers"

Nope -- doesn't apply. Nothing unfair going on -- no captive/coerced labour.

(2) the action of making use of and benefiting from resources. e.g. "the Bronze Age saw exploitation of gold deposits"

Yep; I'm a resource and happy to be so.

Answer 3

I think that you are overlooking that people can get rewarded in ways that do not involve money.

If you are asking if Stack Exchange is unethical for allowing people to use the systems they've set up to build communities for the exchange of knowledge without any money changing hands, the answer is "no". If you compare Stack Exchange to a company like Facebook which seems like it's free, but generates much of its value by helping themselves to personal information about its users and selling that to third parties, Stack Exchange starts to look a lot more upstanding. Adults are making a choice to participate and it's pretty clear what they are giving Stack Exchange, and what they will get in return.

The value people get from contributing to the communities on the Stack Exchange network varies from person to person, but whatever it is that they get is of similar or greater value to whatever they give, or they wouldn't be giving it. Stack Exchange is very transparent about what it means to contribute here and how you are rewarded for your contributions. I don't see how Stack Exchange inviting consenting adults to participate here could be construed as unethical.

If you're asking whether the contributors are unethical for giving away their effort to a for-profit company, well I don't agree that they are giving it away; they just aren't getting paid in money. If I get an answer to a tricky software problem here for free, wouldn't it be ethical for me to "pay it forward" and answer someone else's question? If I really enjoy tidying-up text, is it unethical for me to edit posts here just for the enjoyment of it? If I like the communities here better than on the non-profit sites, is it unethical for me to participate where I have the most fun?

Answer 4

These sites ask for a professional level of research both in questions and answers. They are for-profit sites, but people are not paid for questions or answers.

So, is this a form of exploitation?

I cannot put a price tag on the knowledge I have gained, from doing the required research, to answer questions on my primary community. What I can say is I answer those questions, because I enjoy learning, and use the opportunity to become a better writer. I am absolutely not being exploited.

If, for whatever reason, somebody wants to spend time helping others to learn for free, why don't they do that for a non-profit site, for example improving articles in Wikipedia?

I despise the political viewpoints of Wikipedia. I will never support Wikipedia by donating money to them. I also not agree with some of the political viewpoints of Stack Exchange, which is the reason I personally will never donate money to the community, if requests for donations were to be requested.

The question is about ethics, not law.

I have no idea what this question is about but it actually has nothing to do with ethics or law. You have not actually raised an ethical question.

if you want to build high-quality libraries, you should pay the creators of the content, shouldn't you? (unless you make it a non-profit site) This is exactly my question.

There is a reason Quora is trash, Quora pays contributors, and their content often is inaccurate trash. Did I mention I hate Quora more than I hate Wikipedia?

The specific trigger is realizing the high demands for a question to be accepted. The goal doesn't seem helping as many people as possible, but making a professional level profitable site using free high quality labor.

It only takes a minimal effort to write a high quality answer.

Answer 5

Two things to offer here.

Is Stack Exchange "Exploitative"?

You've provided one definition, and then referenced "ethical exploitation" in your answer using that definition:

Noun (1) the action or fact of treating someone unfairly in order to benefit from their work.
eg. "the exploitation of migrant workers", misuse, ill-treatment

You've omitted, however, a secondary definition of the term that's much more applicable here:

(2) the action of making use of and benefiting from resources.
eg. "the Bronze Age saw exploitation of gold deposits", utilization, usage

Stack Exchange is unquestionably exploitative in this way– but so are you! Just as Stack uses our contributions to populate their platform, you "exploit" that very same resource every single time you visit and read something useful. This is intended and by-design; Stack's mission is to "build a library of detailed answers to every question about [topic]". They're building resources to be exploited by everyone, for both your and their benefit. Their business model is fundamentally linked with people finding their sites valuable and worth exploiting; without that, Stack wouldn't possess nearly the clout that they do, nor the large pool of clients that they get to market their premium products to.

But Does the First Definition Apply?

Circling back to the first definition:

(1) the action or fact of treating someone unfairly in order to benefit from their work.

Stack only fits this definition if you can describe the relationship between Stack and its curators as "unfair", and based on what you've written in your question, answer, and comments, you seem to hold that Stack being for-profit is unfair because curators aren't compensated monetarily.

I think that you are vastly underselling the value that Stack offers to everyone with an internet connection, whether curator or otherwise. The main value of Stack Exchange is most certainly not to the wallets of Stack's stakeholders, it's to the millions of users that derive value from Stack's knowledge base every single day. If anything, that's unfair, not that Stack's employees and stakeholders are getting paid.

Stack is not unfairly benefitting from its curators; it's giving them a place to contribute, and providing a valuable service for millions of visitors, free of charge. And all that without the (largely unethical) data harvesting that's commonplace across the internet today.

Answer 6

You teach for free, and you learn for free.

The more curious thing is the fact that even the authors of research articles whose work is published (not in Open Access) are not allowed to circulate, upload, share their own work.

Answer 7

I will try to write my own answer based on all the answers that I have received. I hope to be fair to them.

The owners of SE designed a system of "rewards" (badges, medals) to motivate experts all around the world to build a huge database of high quality questions and answers for free.

The system is successful and the owners have got a very valuable learning resource that they obtained at an extraordinarily low cost. As we can expect, the profit for them is huge and the site has been sold by US$1.8B recently.

The experts that contributed enjoy and learn through the process and they consider this to be enough compensation. In any case, the owners have not shared the huge profit with the experts that did the job in any extent whatsoever.

So, if we define exploitation as "the action or fact of treating someone unfairly in order to benefit from their work", is this exploitation? Yes, of course! In other words, was the trading of gold for trinkets exploitation?

But we live in a society where exploitation is not always considered unethical, and not only the contributors, but also millions of other people benefit from the high quality database. So we can call the SE model as a form of ethical exploitation, if that is not an oxymoron.