A Moderator Strike on StackExchange over the Acceptance of AI-Generated Content

And the next speaker in this Social Media & Society 2024 conference session is Damien Renard, whose interest is in the power dynamics between platform operators and user communities. The focus here is on StackExchange, where moderators went on strike in protest against the platform’s May 2023 policy change to allow AI-generated content.

Moderators saw this as breaking an implicit contract between platform operators and moderators; they were worried about the impact on content quality and concerned that this policy change was implemented without consultation with the platform community. This is an example of digital power struggles on platforms, which have become theatres of collective action and power management, where governmentality is exercised and refined.

Moderators are often volunteers who manage content and oversee users to ensure community standards and platform policies; they have a dual role of authority over users and subordination under platform rules, and are therefore embedded in complex power structures. The influx of AI content and accounts further complicates this.

The present project examined the StackExchange Meta site – the backchannel for discussion amongst moderators. Moderators themselves are volunteers who have signed the moderator agreement (a formal ‘contract’ between moderators and platform operators) and were selected by the community through a voting mechanism. The moderator strike represents a collective action that was coordinated between a broad range of participants which can be seen as an insurrection against the platform operators, motivated by their concerns over how the acceptance of AI content would affect the platform’s content quality.

The process followed multiple stages: an open letter indicating the moderators’ intention to strike; an effort to spread the word and mobilise moderators across all of StackExchange; organising negotiations; maintaining the strike effort and sharing updates about the negotiation process; and sharing the results of the negotiation process and coming to an agreement to end the strike.

This can be seen as a series of performances, drawing on a repertoire of actions typically available to striking workers. It therefore also asserted moderators’ role as platform workers, and increased their visibility. This is especially relevant in the context of the growing challenge to digital workers that is emerging from artificial intelligence technologies; AI is emerging as a new actor in platform power struggles.