Aol’s chat rooms and message boards had the same community/pioneering feel, but they were hitched to a company whose main business was Internet connectivity and looked poised to dominate the Internet age. So Aol monetized and the monitors revolted. Aol finally ended its volunteer program in 2005 and settled the lawsuit in 2010 for $15 million. One third went to the community leaders, one third to the lawyers, and one third to charity.

As described, Reddit is an interesting example where people voluntarily fill the same community leader role that Aol’s volunteers did, although they do so with fewer restrictions and more agency. That said, while we don’t expect or believe that Reddit should be sued for back wages, it may suffer from the same problem as Aol: Reddit’s fanatical users may remain devoted only as long as the site still feels, as volunteers once described Aol, like a “community where people got together to get together.” Reddit has struggled to ratchet up revenues, likely because users would rebel against aggressive monetization.