Editing AOL (section)

===Community leaders===
AOL used a system of volunteers to moderate its chat rooms, forums and user communities. The program dated back to AOL's early days, when it charged by the hour for access and one of its highest billing services was chat. AOL provided free access to community leaders in exchange for moderating the chat rooms, and this effectively made chat very cheap to operate, and more lucrative than AOL's other services of the era. There were 33,000 community leaders in 1996.<ref name="wired1999">{{Cite magazine |title=Inside AOL's "Cyber-Sweatshop" |url=https://www.wired.com/1999/10/volunteers/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220303010943/https://www.wired.com/1999/10/volunteers/ |archive-date=March 3, 2022 |access-date=February 2, 2016 |magazine=[[Wired (magazine)|Wired]] |language=en-US}}</ref> All community leaders received hours of training and underwent a probationary period. While most community leaders moderated chat rooms, some ran AOL communities and controlled their layout and design, with as much as 90% of AOL's content being created or overseen by community managers until 1996.<ref name="journal">{{Cite journal |last=Postigo, Hector |date=September 3, 2009 |title=America Online volunteers: Lessons from an early co-production community |url=https://www.academia.edu/10314787 |url-status=live |journal=International Journal of Cultural Studies |volume=12 |issue=5 |pages=451–469 |doi=10.1177/1367877909337858 |issn=1367-8779 |s2cid=144865243 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220328063709/https://www.academia.edu/10314787 |archive-date=March 28, 2022 |access-date=April 4, 2020}}</ref>

By 1996, [[ISP]]s were beginning to charge flat rates for unlimited access, which they could do at a profit because they only provided internet access. Even though AOL would lose money with such a pricing scheme, it was forced by market conditions to offer unlimited access in October 1996. In order to return to profitability, AOL rapidly shifted its focus from content creation to advertising, resulting in less of a need to carefully moderate every forum and chat room to keep users willing to pay by the minute to remain connected.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Munk, Nina |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Hhkt_fUrGOkC&q=unlimited |title=Fools Rush In: Steve Case, Jerry Levin, and the Unmaking of AOL Time Warner |publisher=HarperCollins |year=2009 |isbn=9780061743740 |pages=82–88}}</ref>

After unlimited access, AOL considered scrapping the program entirely, but continued it with a reduced number of community leaders, with scaled-back roles in creating content.<ref name="journal" /> Although community leaders continued to receive free access, after 1996 they were motivated more by the prestige of the position and the access to moderator tools and restricted areas within AOL.<ref name="wired1999" /><ref name="journal" /> By 1999, there were over 15,000 volunteers in the program.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Napoli, Lisa |date=May 26, 1999 |title=Former Volunteers Sue AOL, Seeking Back Pay for Work |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1999/05/26/nyregion/former-volunteers-sue-aol-seeking-back-pay-for-work.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200417072320/https://www.nytimes.com/1999/05/26/nyregion/former-volunteers-sue-aol-seeking-back-pay-for-work.html |archive-date=April 17, 2020 |access-date=April 4, 2020 |work=[[The New York Times]] |page=Section B, Page 10}}</ref>

In May 1999, two former volunteers filed a class-action lawsuit alleging AOL violated the [[Fair Labor Standards Act]] by treating volunteers like employees. Volunteers had to apply for the position, commit to working for at least three to four hours a week, fill out timecards and sign a non-disclosure agreement.<ref name="priceonomics">{{Cite web |date=August 21, 2014 |title=The Aol Chat Room Monitor Revolt |url=http://priceonomics.com/the-aol-chat-room-monitor-revolt/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160207225308/http://priceonomics.com/the-aol-chat-room-monitor-revolt/ |archive-date=February 7, 2016 |access-date=February 2, 2016 |website=Priceonomics}}</ref> On July 22, AOL ended its youth corps, which consisted of 350 underage community leaders.<ref name="wired1999" /> At this time, the [[United States Department of Labor]] began an investigation into the program, but it came to no conclusions about AOL's practices.<ref name="priceonomics" />

AOL ended its community leader program on June 8, 2005. The class action lawsuit dragged on for years, even after AOL ended the program and AOL declined as a major internet company. In 2010, AOL finally agreed to settle the lawsuit for $15&nbsp;million.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Kirchner, Lauren |date=February 10, 2011 |title=AOL Settled with Unpaid "Volunteers" for $15 Million |url=https://archives.cjr.org/the_news_frontier/aol_settled_with_unpaid_volunt.php |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200725052505/https://archives.cjr.org/the_news_frontier/aol_settled_with_unpaid_volunt.php |archive-date=July 25, 2020 |access-date=April 4, 2020 |publisher=[[Columbia Journalism Review]]}}</ref> The community leader program was described as an example of [[Co-production (society)|co-production]] in a 2009 article in ''[[International Journal of Cultural Studies]]''.<ref name="journal" />