#freelabor — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #freelabor, aggregated by home.social.
-
The reason I think #MatriarchalCommunism is the next (or first!?) truly civilized "phase" (if we survive this) is because the rise of primative #accumulation and #capitalism, including the #enclosures of #public #land transfomed into #private, the development of #wage #labor following the #crisis of european “need” for expanding #markets and labor, and the witch trials and murders (10s of thousands of basic #sisters, daughters, and #grandmothers) created or deepened (while adding 100% incrs of intensity of #misogyny) the line between men/male and women/female (less than), while hitherto, communities included #identities and #labor performed independently or in #untraditional #families.
Previous to “Oh shit the world is round!” the #complementary #division of labor for #families in the structure meant women's #work was valued, #compensated with #trade and #respect. #Euro-Colonialist states and the church’s (both #Protestant and #Catholic) #insatiable #desire for #freelabor and #profit purposefully created #genders #races and #childabuse. Before, there were territories and natural boundaries. after the violent and terrifying rise of #privateproperty in #Europe they demanded heirarchies binaries to separate who profits from who labors and who slaves
But what if #We #ridetogether #rideordie -
The reason I think #MatriarchalCommunism is the next (or first!?) truly civilized "phase" (if we survive this) is because the rise of primative #accumulation and #capitalism, including the #enclosures of #public #land transfomed into #private, the development of #wage #labor following the #crisis of european “need” for expanding #markets and labor, and the witch trials and murders (10s of thousands of basic #sisters, daughters, and #grandmothers) created or deepened (while adding 100% incrs of intensity of #misogyny) the line between men/male and women/female (less than), while hitherto, communities included #identities and #labor performed independently or in #untraditional #families.
Previous to “Oh shit the world is round!” the #complementary #division of labor for #families in the structure meant women's #work was valued, #compensated with #trade and #respect. #Euro-Colonialist states and the church’s (both #Protestant and #Catholic) #insatiable #desire for #freelabor and #profit purposefully created #genders #races and #childabuse. Before, there were territories and natural boundaries. after the violent and terrifying rise of #privateproperty in #Europe they demanded heirarchies binaries to separate who profits from who labors and who slaves
But what if #We #ridetogether #rideordie -
@tante I love free software and creative commons, but in this AI age there needs to be a way of protecting them from crawling and violating the reuse licenses. Otherwise #freesoftware is just #freelabor without #UBI
-
Anticipation.
Off to volunteer our help for a friend who owns the local bookstore. She needs some bookshelves and their contents moved.
You know you're old when you start taking aspirin in anticipation of the day you're about to have.
-
The whole open source idea feels like a trick by companies to get free labor from idealistic programmers.
#opensource #foss #freesoftware #softwareengineering #programming #programmers #freelabor #unpaidwork #unpaidlabor #exploitation -
The whole open source idea feels like a trick by companies to get free labor from idealistic programmers.
#opensource #foss #freesoftware #softwareengineering #programming #programmers #freelabor #unpaidwork #unpaidlabor #exploitation -
The whole open source idea feels like a trick by companies to get free labor from idealistic programmers.
#opensource #foss #freesoftware #softwareengineering #programming #programmers #freelabor #unpaidwork #unpaidlabor #exploitation -
The whole open source idea feels like a trick by companies to get free labor from idealistic programmers.
#opensource #foss #freesoftware #softwareengineering #programming #programmers #freelabor #unpaidwork #unpaidlabor #exploitation -
The whole open source idea feels like a trick by companies to get free labor from idealistic programmers.
#opensource #foss #freesoftware #softwareengineering #programming #programmers #freelabor #unpaidwork #unpaidlabor #exploitation -
AI isn’t a secret scheme—it’s an obvious scheme. Of course they want your corrections. You're the unpaid intern polishing the algorithm just to get a worse autocomplete. #AI #FreeLabor 💼🤖
-
CREATING ON YOUTUBE MEANS PAYING TO WORK
YouTube is like Uber. Uber asks you to own, in your garage, a black sedan with less than 100,000 km on it—one you’re not using—and claims you can start making money from it. “It doesn’t cost you anything,” Uber says, since the car is just sitting there anyway. But in reality, it’s the most financially vulnerable people who see it as an opportunity. They take out a loan to buy a car. And when that car hits 100,000 km and the loan isn’t paid off, they get a second one—and now they’re stuck with two loans. Uber “earns” you €5/hour, but the cost of maintaining your setup is €7.50/hour. The more you work, the more your tool degrades. You earn 25% more, but spend 25% more. The vehicle is repurposed for an economic model that only benefits Uber.
¯_
YOUTUBE IS NO DIFFERENTWhen you become a YouTuber, they make you believe that “anyone can stream with a smartphone.” That all you need is an idea, a bit of courage, and some basic gear. That you can compete with MrBeast—who spends a million per video—on a shoestring budget. That’s a lie.
¯_
THE REAL COST OF A SETUPI spent five years, from 2018 to 2023, saving up to buy a €5,000 PC solely for production. Because streaming isn’t just “playing a game.” Your PC becomes a 4K broadcasting server. You need two graphics cards—or even two separate machines:
- One to run the software or the game
- The other to encode, stream, and record
You also need:
- A second monitor (for video return and replay)
- A replay buffer (to capture instant replays)
- A Stream Deck for seamless transitions
- A Wave XLR for professional audio quality
- Audio interfaces, mixers, USB cameras, XLR microphones
All these high-end peripherals constantly tax your system. You need two USB hubs capable of handling 15 devices at once with no signal loss. A single weak link can ruin everything. And that’s not all. To stream a Nintendo Switch, you need a capture card—and you can’t rely on your streaming software’s preview because of input lag. You have to play directly on the other screen already in place.
¯_
ONGOING TECHNICAL LEARNINGStreaming requires broad technical expertise:
- Lighting, audio, capture devices, networking
- Compression, codecs, editing, formatting
- Live direction, visual/audio transitions, real-time coordination
And you’re doing all this with zero support from YouTube.
¯_
STORAGE AND ENERGY COSTSYour PC isn’t enough anymore. You’ll need a NAS—a network-attached storage system—cheaper than the cloud in the long run, but which demands:
- Two 20 TB drives (mirrored) → 40 TB
- A dedicated server, which adds another €1,000
It’s become a mini television studio. Which brings with it:
- Planned obsolescence
- Frequent breakdowns
- Hardware wear and tear
- Electricity costs of a 1,000-watt PC plus a 24/7 server
Altogether, the setup costs more than a car.
¯_
AND YOUTUBE PAYS NOTHINGAnd yet, it’s YouTube that cashes in. It runs ads on your videos—even if you’re not monetized. It hijacks your gear, your energy, your skills. And if your content doesn’t “perform,” it simply ignores you. A PC, cameras, capture cards, hubs, microphones, lights—tens of thousands of euros invested just to exist. And the platform invests nothing in return. No visibility. No value sharing. Not even a word of encouragement.
¯#InvisibleLabor #PlatformCapitalism #CreatorEconomy #DigitalPrecarity #FreeLabor #YouTubeProblems #Shadowban
-
Fun (?) fact: https://pdfimpose.it was launched (about) one year ago. Besides my wife and a coworker, the only people who reached out to me where three professional printers. It is flattering, but once again, it raises the issue of companies benefiting from free labor provided by free software maintainers…
-
My 18-Months Rule for Open-Source Contributions:
You make a good-faith contribution to an open-source project. There’s never a response. What do you do? On a rule I’ve established for my own open-source work, and the reasons behind it.
-
I guess it’s expectation sensitivity, but I HATE IT when someone I don’t know (or do know, but not well) asks to “meet up” or “grab a coffee.” [This tends to be #professional life] Usually there’s a “pick your brain” or something else vague in there. Why? What do you want? Are you asking me for #freelabor ? Or you want me to just send you business? Without any relationship. Gotcha. Just lay it out there. And if you’re inviting, pay. This is what you get for being #corporate adjacent.
-
"The Reddit corpus of data is really valuable, but we don’t need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free.”
-- Steve Huffman, #Reddit CEOThe corpus of data provided and moderated for free by their community.
-
