# Measuring the Monetary Value of Online Volunteer Work

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2205.14528 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.14528/

## Key facts

- Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 28 May 2022.

## Built on by (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [SLM-Mod: Small Language Models Surpass LLMs at Content Moderation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.13155/) (2024)
- [MoMoE: Mixture of Moderation Experts Framework for AI-Assisted Online Governance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.14483/) (2025)
- [Toxicity Detection is NOT all you Need: Measuring the Gaps to Supporting Volunteer Content Moderators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.07879/) (2023)
- [Venire: A Machine Learning-Guided Panel Review System for Community Content Moderation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.23448/) (2024)
- [PluRule: A Benchmark for Moderating Pluralistic Communities on Social Media](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.17187/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Online volunteers are a crucial labor force that keeps many for-profit systems afloat (e.g. social media platforms and online review sites). Despite their substantial role in upholding highly valuable technological systems, online volunteers have no way of knowing the value of their work. This paper uses content moderation as a case study and measures its monetary value to make apparent volunteer labor's value. Using a novel dataset of private logs generated by moderators, we use linear mixed-effect regression and estimate that Reddit moderators worked a minimum of 466 hours per day in 2020. These hours amount to 3.4 million USD a year based on the median hourly wage for comparable content moderation services in the U.S. We discuss how this information may inform pathways to alleviate the one-sided relationship between technology companies and online volunteers.