#'but surely having somebody content moderate the online space my business runs on 24/7 cannot cost any money???' - '...'

[shacklesburst]

The way the question is phrased is supposed to redirect attention away from the real issue at hand.

First of all, yes, compensation need not always be monetary, it can also be status or power or experience. (However, this usually won’t work ad infinitum.) This much is obvious. Yet money is the unit of caring. And do these streamer businesses care about their chats being moderated? Do they care about this moderation being provided in a sufficient quality and quantity? Why do they care? Is it because large parts of their businesses (advertisers, sponsors, engagement) implicitly or explicitly require them to provide content moderation in their chats? Are their businesses, as such, dependent on the quality and quantity of services rendered?

Then there will come a time from which they will pay for that. The question is never if. It’s when. As a business owner, you can take on a certain amount of risk, and up to a certain point, you usually have to to even get started. But soon enough all these streamer businesses will pay, because hunger for risk always decreases with size. Some will take longer to reach this conclusion or not be able to reach it on their own at all, maybe because they lack the required business acumen or because they fail before they get to it. And yes, there will be gnawing and gnashing of teeth once they realize (or stomping of feet, as demonstrated by some of the man-children in the video). But nobody will get past that point without paying up in some shape or form.

Because the question was never really “should you pay?” It always was “can you afford not to?”