I was on TikTok the other day just browsing, and a pop-up came up on my screen, encouraging me to make a new template for them with the possibility of profiting form making it attached. This piqued my usual skepticism of social media work schemes, as I have spent many years creating and uploading to the platform without ever making a dime. I am not resentful about how I’ve spent that time, as I have learned valuable content creation skills like video editing and 3D design, but I couldn’t help thinking about how platforms now, on top of not paying creators for the content they produce are now crowdsourcing the development they would normally pay developers for, under the guise of a profit contest… It made me concerned that this is a trend of modern social media now…

I’m pretty sure that most of the people who spend time developing filters and features for TikTok won’t see any useful pay from doing so, but from TikTok’s corporate operations, this method of encouraging people to do free work will likely prove quite profitable. It’s a troubling sign of our future, a world where everyone shut out of jobs suddenly has to participate in competitions to be underpaid or even not paid at all, and that well may become our only options as Ai replaces art, music, and many other careers that people could serve. The worst part of being replaced by Ai is