The free labor of “local guides”: How Google translates the “hacker ethic” into a data-accumulation culture

Abstract

Google Maps has become an infrastructuralized platform for informed navigation, yet its business model relies on a gamified system in which users voluntarily take on the role of Local Guides to generate behavioral surplus and fill in the computational gap. In the context of the contemporary data imperative, this article conceptualizes such contributions of Volunteered Geographic Information as a form of free labor. Drawing on the notion of the hacker work ethic, it abductively examines how this exploitation is effectively legitimized through Google's organization of data production as “hacking”—a productive practice that rewards participants not with money, but with reputation, passion, efficacy, inclusivity, and friendship. Google Maps thus operates as a Maussian bargain, initiating a cycle of gift exchange while strategically repurposing data through its switching and programming power. This translation of the hacker ethic reflects a broader trend in capitalism, which recuperates critiques to secure actors for profit creation and to evolve in new directions.

Introduction

With over 1 billion monthly active users, Google Maps has become an “infrastructuralized platform” (Plantin, 2018) for informed navigation. However, this “technology in motion” (McQuire, 2019: 153) is constantly updated through real-time data from its network of Local Guides. Local Guides are individuals participating in the Local Guide Program, launched in 2015 and since evolved into a fully-fledged gamified system where users voluntarily add information overlays to the Maps. Alongside virtual rewards, participants may occasionally be granted tangible perks. By 2024, this incentivized system had fostered a vibrant global community of over 150 million Local Guides (Ellis, 2024).

Operating on a platform where individuals voluntarily create and share geographic information, the Local Guide Program exemplifies the gamified crowdsourcing of “Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI)” (Goodchild, 2007).

VGI has been defined as “a special case of the more general Web phenomenon of user-generated content” (Goodchild, 2007: 212). It is embedded in the convergence of digital mapping technologies and web-based social networking practices, a trend termed the Geoweb (Bishop and Grubesic, 2016). VGI can range from coordinates automatically embedded in digital content to more complex annotated GPS tracks and trails. VGI emphasizes collaboration, volunteerism, and accessible map-making tools that allow non-experts to contribute their “everyday forms of spatial reasoning” (Elwood, 2009: 257). While the socio-technical landscape has changed significantly since the formative years (Fast, 2024), the Local Guide Program resonates with foundational discussions on the diversification of geospatial information production through the Geoweb.

However, VGI is now deeply entangled with the political-economic regime where data becomes “central and essential for increasingly more sectors of contemporary capitalism” (Sadowski, 2019: 1). Derivatives from geographic information are no less significant than the information itself (Couldry and Powell, 2014: 3): social knowledge from data mining underpins new forms of economic value, enabling user profiling, algorithmic training, system optimization, and the development of digital services. Data also appears to be a key asset for digital technology firms, “providing an important new measure for investors to evaluate future revenues and earnings expectations” (Birch et al., 2021: 1). Consequently, numerous modern institutions actively recruit specific subjects to labor in data production, analysis, and enactment.

Google Maps users contribute over 200 pieces of information per second (Russell, 2019), engaging in a labor process that “no longer consists of simply adding content but also includes maintaining its geographic database” (Plantin, 2018: 491). As Leszczynski (2012: 80) points out, unpaid user labor plays a crucial role in cost reduction, as shown by Google ending its contracts with NavTeq and TeleAtlas shortly after launching participatory mapping in 2009. Integrated into Google Ads, Local Guides also generate a huge amount of “behavioral surplus” (Zuboff, 2019), which is used for targeted advertisements (Srnicek, 2016) and provides training data for complex technical assemblages. In general, the contributions of Local Guides are indispensable to Google Maps and represent free labor that is “simultaneously voluntarily given and unwaged, enjoyed and exploited” (Terranova, 2000: 33).

Given Google's co-opt of participatory frameworks into its business model, Couldry and Mejias (2019: 58) describe such VGI contributions as “playbor” (Fuchs, 2014), arguing that the joy of social interaction is presented as sufficient compensation. This resonates with Burawoy's (1979: 261) observation that capitalism faces the dilemma of “securing surplus value while at the same time keeping it hidden.” In digital infrastructures, the apparent automation and autonomy of platforms are sustained by vast amounts of “human-in-the-loop” work that fills the gaps of computational systems, yet is systematically obscured as “ghost work” (Gray and Suri, 2019). Scholars have theorized such data-related labor in different ways: as “heteromated labor” recruited through “inclusionary logic, active engagement, and invisible control” (Ekbia and Nardi, 2017: 39), as “infrastructural care work” (Swartz, 2017), or “labor of love” (Burns and Welker, 2022) that resembles care work performed out of moral obligations. Across these framings, what unites them is a trick justifying the exploitation of underpaid or unpaid labor sustaining computer-mediated networks (Briziarelli, 2014; Scholz, 2017).

In response to such a hybrid of capitalist production and “commons-based peer production” (Benkler and Nissenbaum, 2006), this paper investigates the subjectivities of Local Guides to uncover how their VGI contributions to a for-profit platform are justified. Put differently, it asks why some Local Guides are willing to provide geographic information to a commercial enterprise without formal compensation, and how the exploitation of this digital labor is morally rationalized. This study therefore considers VGI contribution within data-driven capitalism as economic practices that are “made up of human practices framed by institutions, both embedded in specific cultures” (Banet-Weiser and Castells, 2017: 4).

Based on Burawoy's extended case study (1998), this work takes an abductive approach to examining instances of Local Guides’ contributions that can plausibly be understood as culturally situated forms of “hacking” within a “Maussian bargain” (Fourcade and Kluttz, 2020), which return to “participants not as money, but as reputation, artistic pleasure or friendship, or all three” (Turner, 2006: 80).

This work begins by engaging with theories that conceptualize the hacker ethic as a form of Weberian work ethic, and tracing the contributions of Local Guides back to the practice of hacking in the Geoweb. Based on empirical evidence, this study illustrates that, beyond the crowds of participants who contribute data for gamification rewards or potential perks, certain instances of Local Guides embody a form of “hacker community.” They generate value for Google Maps driven by a passion for playfully creating technological excellence and a desire for belonging and peer recognition within their community. Ultimately, their contributions aim to make Google Maps a public good rather than a source of personal gain, even actively excluding monetary remuneration. These values and beliefs align with the “hacker [work] ethic” outlined by Himanen (2001), who positions it as a counterculture morally elevated above the “Protestant ethic” that underpins capitalist society (Weber, 2013).

This study also critically examines how Google Maps, as a capitalist enterprise, translates and institutionalizes the hacker ethic for data accumulation. I highlight the socio-technical features of both Google Maps and the Local Guides Program to demonstrate how Google Maps exerts “switching/programming power” (Castells, 2013) and embeds a “hacker community” within a capitalist network. This process can be understood as part of the broader recuperation of critiques that spurs capitalism to evolve into new directions (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006: 20).

A decade ago, Haklay (2013: 67) noted that in VGI, “the participant's labour is enrolled in the service of these corporations, leaving the issue of payback for this effort a moot point.” However, Geoweb studies have prematurely sidelined critical questions of value, participation, and co-optation, given the increasing complication of value creation around data (Alvarez León, 2024). As West (2019) notes, “data capitalism places primacy on the power of networks by creating value out of the digital traces produced within them.” Understanding how Google Maps embeds a “hacker community” inside itself provides an illustrative case for examining broader data monetization mediated by network switching and justification regimes.

The hacker work ethic

As Douglas Thomas (2002: xxii) observes, the figure of the hacker is split, ambivalent, and historically periodized. The “old school” hackers of the 1960s and 1970s, credited with catalyzing the computer revolution, are frequently contrasted with their 1980s and 1990s counterparts, more commonly depicted as cybercriminals. The hacker ethic is most often attributed to the former group, articulated as moral codes and implicitly embraced within that community. Levy (1984) summarizes this ethic through six tenets: openness of information, decentralization, free access to computers, meritocracy, artistic programming, and the potential for computers to improve the world.

The conception of the hacker ethic employed here, however, draws primarily on The Hacker Ethic and the Spirit of the Information Age by Himanen (2001). As the title indicates, Himanen echoes Weber (2013) and juxtaposes the values of old-school hackers with the Protestant ethic as the spirit of capitalism. McConchie (2015: 880) suggests that Himanen's framework might be more accurately described as “the hacker work ethic,” which underpins why hackers engage in hacking as a form of productive labor. It can be subsumed in what Fuchs (2024) terms “culturalist understandings of capitalism,” and is conceptually linked to Sombart (1902), Weber (2013), and Boltanski and Chiapello (2007).

Himanen (2001) draws on the self-representations of prominent figures in the free and open-source software (F/OSS) movement and identifies three interrelated dimensions of the hacker ethic concerning work, money, and information resources. Building on Weber's notion of labor “as an absolute end in itself, as a calling” (Weber, 2013: 25), hacking constitutes an end in itself, sustained by intrinsic motivations such as joy, passion, autonomy, and flexibility, which are often absent in hierarchical labor relations, but enable creativity to be channeled into technological excellence and social worth. Moreover, hacking relies on a distinctive collaborative structure embedded in what Kelty (2008: 28) calls “recursive public, a public that is constituted by a shared concern for maintaining the means of association through which they come together.” Labor outputs, often code, generate reputation for contributors through meritocracy and circulate within a gift-giving, reciprocal ethos (Coleman, 2013). Monetary compensation becomes secondary, and such benefits suggest that “information should be free,” thereby placing the reduction of the digital divide high on the agenda.

Building on “justification regimes” (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006), Bergquist et al. (2011) argue that the hacker ethic embodies a moral order of labor that, in many ways, attempts to justify itself as superior to the capitalist one. Accordingly, the hacker work ethic relies on a civic logic based on collective will and the capacity to mobilize communities around common interests; an inspirational logic that is expressed through appeals to the authentic values of creativity and freedom; a popular logic where recognition as a hacker is earned through meritocratic evaluation; and an industrial logic manifests in the emphasis on F/OSS as a more efficient and higher-quality model of software development, which simultaneously serves as a vehicle for realizing the civic logic.

Yet this value system has often been dismissed as techno-utopian, especially since many hackers have contradicted it by joining proprietary software development (Thomas, 2002: 10). However, Himanen (2001: ix–x) acknowledges that hackers often rely parasitically on formal employment (Berry, 2008) and that these moral codes are not universally shared across the community. His neglect of cross-fertilization between hackers and the nascent IT industry is partially excused by his ambition to theorize the hacker ethic as a Weberian ideal type to suggest an alternative path to capitalism, and unravel broader labor processes that can be interpreted as forms of “hacking.”

This attempt, however, necessitates an anatomy of hacking. As Söderberg and Maxigas (2022: 19, 21) note, “the identity of a hacker is bound up with a practice rather than a style,” and “hacking is as fluid as the technology to which it relates.” Hacking has been argued to encompass diverse practices such as DIY (Do-It-Yourself), Maker culture, and even academic research (Banet-Weiser and Castells, 2017: 15; McConchie, 2015). As Richard Stallman (n.d.) famously remarked, hacking can be broadly understood as “playfully doing something difficult, whether useful or not.” Tracing the genealogy of hacking, Jordan (2017) emphasizes the “re-determination” of information relations and possibilities as central to hacker identity. Similarly, Wark (2004: paras. 74, 83) argues that, “there is always a surplus of possibility expressed in what is actual,” and that hacking begins with what she terms “abstraction,” the construction of previously unrealized relations from different and seemingly unrelated matters. Accordingly, hacking could be abstracted as the practice of tinkering with, disassembling, and remixing information, objects, materials, or relationships to generate new meanings and possibilities, sustained by gift relations and peer recognition. Hacking emphasizes “repurposability” (Delfanti and Söderberg, 2018), while the hacker ethic provides both a moral and pragmatic justification for repurposing. Therefore, at an analytical level, actors who “hack” in this broad sense may invoke the hacker ethic as a mode of justification.

Indeed, this work ethic—as a moral order of justification—finds support in studies of motivations for F/OSS and other open collaboration projects, such as Wikipedia and OpenStreetMap (OSM), where technical practices can be understood within this definition of hacking. Research across behavioral sciences, psychology, and media studies consistently identifies both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations among contributors (Rafaeli and Ariel, 2008). Intrinsic motivations—such as fun, recreation, learning, intellectual stimulation, and creative self-expression—correspond to the inspirational logic (Hars and Ou, 2001; Lakhani and Wolf, 2003). Extrinsic motivations—including reciprocity, reputation, networking, and a sense of belonging (Kollock, 1999; Kuznetsov, 2006)—underpin the civic and popular logics of the hacker ethic. The belief that “information should be free” also emerges as an important ideological motivation (Fritz et al., 2017; Nov, 2007).

However, motivational studies do not fully mirror the hacker ethic as an ideal type, since monetary factors, such as the pursuit of potential job opportunities, also play a role (Lerner and Tirole, 2005). Nevertheless, these notable resonances suggest the empirical relevance of this ideal type.

The extension of the hacker ethic to the sphere of the Local Guides program is indeed an experimentation of that ideal type, a “hacking of hacking.” However, as Söderberg and Maxigas (2022: 21) argue, “the specificity of the hacker […] would be lost if all references to technical practices were abandoned.” This underscores the importance of retaining attention to technical practices when extending the hacker work ethic beyond its original context. In the next section, the VGI production of Local Guides will thus be traced back to its socio-technical origin.

The socio-technical origin of local guides program

Hacking within the Geoweb is evident in the rise of map mashups (Erle et al., 2005). Originally a musical term, mashups in mapping involve “combining two or more pre-existing data sources from the Internet into a novel, online cartographic representation” (Zook et al., 2017). Hackers played a key role early on, exemplified by Paul Rademacher's Housingmaps.com, which overlaid Craigslist data onto Google Maps through reverse-engineering. Google later embraced this creative, if unauthorized, hacking by launching the Maps Application Programming Interface (API) in May 2005, sparking a wave of third-party mashups combining Google Maps with diverse datasets (Dalton, 2013, 2015; Plantin, 2014).

Despite the standardization introduced by the API, hacking practices on Google Maps remain diverse. VGI contributions from Local Guides differ significantly in technical complexity from those of software developers using the API. Haklay (2013: 63) introduces a four-layer hierarchy of Geoweb hacking practices to illustrate these differences. Within this framework, map mashups—integrating information from multiple systems—constitute “shallow technical hacking,” where systems are reconfigured to generate new social meanings. VGI from Local Guides, by contrast, enriches the “data shadows” (Graham, 2014) of places by overlaying information layers onto the base map, aligning more with “meaning hacking” or “using hacking,” practices that shape engagement without directly modifying its underlying structure (Haklay, 2013: 64–65). Haklay follows the definition of hacking as the re-determination of information and its relations, whereas he notes the lower levels of “meaning hacking” and “use hacking,” though widely accessible, involve relatively minor interventions, while the higher levels require skills typically beyond common reach. He argues that this hierarchy of hacking produces a divide between a technological elite and a larger group of less-informed, laboring participants who remain disempowered.

Indeed, Google Maps actively encourages “meaning hacking” and “using hacking,” valuable yet controllable hackings by its users, especially through the launch of its Map Maker tool in June 2008. Map Maker adopted “the appearance of open data community methodologies” (McQuire, 2019: 157) from OSM, a participatory mapping project launched in 2004 as a free, open-source, and collaboratively maintained geospatial database that is often regarded as the most successful example of VGI. Although Map Maker has since been discontinued, its legacy of participatory interactivity—allowing users to easily add features to Google Maps (Farman, 2010: 12)—continues through platforms such as Google My Business, Google My Maps, and, most notably, the Local Guides Program, which integrates gamification, virtual rewards, and tangible gifts inspired by Yelp's Elite program (Payne, 2021). Overall, the Local Guides Program traces its socio-technical origins largely to the influence of OSM.

Nevertheless, OSM is not an uncompromised precedent to Google Maps, free from commercial interests and institutional influence (Ochoa-Ortiz and Re, 2025). Although it originated from an ethos of local engagement and volunteerism, its success as a source of high-quality geodata has increasingly attracted institutional and corporate actors over the years. A growing number of enterprises now pay employees to add and update data on OSM, while Meta contributes through its algorithm-based predictive route data (Michel and Schröder-Bergen, 2022). The incorporation of automated and paid mapping practices has raised concerns about the dilution of OSM's not-for-profit ethos and the marginalization of local knowledge. This has also prompted debate over whether the voluntary contributions of enthusiasts constitute a new form of “data extractivism,” thereby converting leisure-time mappers into a source of uncompensated labor (Schröder-Bergen et al., 2022: 5062). In general, Schröder-Bergen (2024) argues that OSM has transformed from a platform for VGI into an instance of the digital commons embedded within platform capitalism.

Accordingly, OSM, as the precursor of the Local Guides Program, also embodies a hybrid of capitalist production and commons-based peer production. This hybridity can be captured by McConchie's (2015) concept of “hacker cartography,” which situates VGI practices in OSM within a conceptual “third space,” where contributions mediate between autonomy and parasitism, individuality and collectivity, and openness and exclusivity. In this sense, the lens of hacker highlights the actor's ongoing negotiation between authority and commercial power on the one hand, and free or open project communities on the other—a tension that runs throughout hacker history (Söderberg and Maxigas, 2022: ch. 1). Arguably, the Local Guides Program inherits this genealogy, rooted in hacking as the re-determination of geographic information, while also reflecting how VGI is entangled with capitalist appropriation and can be understood as a form of hacking. This opens up space to apply the hacker work ethic as a lens for understanding how such exploitation is justified.

Method design

This study follows Burawoy's (1998) extended case study approach to abductively examine whether certain Local Guides engage in unpaid labor underpinned by Himanen's (2001) hacker work ethic, which presupposes the existence of a recursive public.

Hereby, the study prioritizes community-based participation over purely crowd-sourced contributions. Following Budhathoki and Haythornthwaite (2013: 549–550), online collaboration exists along a continuum from lightweight, anonymous contributions (“crowds”) to persistent, socially engaged contributions (“communities”), where members negotiate project directions and receive recognition. Accordingly, the focus is on Local Guides who actively participate in Local Guide Connect, Google's specific forum for the program, where latent ties evolve into interpersonal relationships and socially situated contributions. The forum serves both as Google's official channel for updates and events and as a space for Guides to share experiences, tips, stories, and opinions.

This focus is justified by the “power-law distribution” typical of open collaboration, where a small proportion of highly active contributors sustains overall activity (Rafaeli and Ariel, 2008: 247). SoCi (Rollison, 2021) indicates that Local Guides constitute only 31% of all reviewers but contribute 62% of 169 million reviews in their survey. Accordingly, Level 5 and above contributors—eligible for badges and official program activities—represent approximately 10% of reviewers yet collectively contribute around 40% of reviews. Although there is no evidence to suggest that forum participants are necessarily the most active contributors, focusing on this subset is still analytically meaningful given their visible engagement within the community.

Notably, Connect moderators merge posts and discussions on similar themes into larger threads, creating curated entry points for collecting qualitative data that reveal the subjectivities. Empirical data were drawn from threads “Why be a Local Guide?” (331 posts), “Any way to earn money from Google Maps Local Guides” (491 posts), “Local Guides in The Mirror—How useful are our contributions?” (99 posts) and “G€t Paid for Our Contribution$? What could happen if that were the case?” (84 posts). These moderator-curated threads provided a semi-structured dataset of self-reported motivations and debates around monetary compensation.

To offset bias from echo-chamber effects, I also employed a flâneur-style participant observation (Aroles and Küpers, 2022, recording posts encountered during routine participation on Connect over a 6-month period (February–July 2023), thereby capturing spontaneous, less curated expressions of engagement. Following ethical guidelines (Markham, 2012), I altered the original IDs of Local Guides in forum references (represented here as “@” plus encrypted IDs) to preserve privacy while maintaining the meaning and sentiment of their posts.

Since November 2022, I have continuously participated as a Local Guide, thereby “walking through” (Light et al., 2018) the program and gaining firsthand insight into user engagement and Google's gamified reward system. The study also involved archival analysis of video recaps from past conferences, activities, and meetups, as well as a review of program policies, Google Maps terms and conditions, and Google blogs related to Local Guides.

Empirical data were iteratively reviewed and coded to identify recurring themes in participants’ motivations, guided by Himanen's (2001) hacker work ethic across five dimensions: (1) playfulness and passion, reflecting intrinsic benefits; (2) technological excellence and efficacy, indicating social value through skill; (3) inclusivity and care, emphasizing equal access; (4) reputation and recognition; and (5) attitudes toward monetary compensation. Codes were non-exclusive, allowing multiple assignments per data segment. This abductive approach does not seek strict statistical generalizations but rather “remixes” (Markham, 2013) the data to highlight how a subset of community-based participants embody the hacker ethic in both subjectivity and practice.

The hacker ethic in the local guide program

Playfulness and passion

Passion is central to the hacker ethic, where hacking is seen as “joyous art” or “high-level play” (Himanen, 2001: 5–6). Linux creator Torvalds attributes his work to fun, and Web inventor Berners-Lee began with playful experiments. Fun also emerges as a key motivation in surveys of F/OSS (Nov, 2007) and underpins Geoweb participation (Erle et al., 2005). This dimension of the hacker ethic emphasizes its inspirational logic, grounded in creativity, authenticity, and spontaneous action.

In parallel, some Local Guides experience free labor as intrinsically enjoyable:

Map editing is one of my favorite sports hahaha yes I said sport because for me it consists of going out to explore my neighborhood, my city and discovering the things that are not right on the map, what is missing and what is unnecessary. (@Silver)

• Although seemingly instrumental, inputting codes and information can be driven by passion, as Local Guides’ contributions are grounded in firsthand exploration,

  I tell the places where I am, and if I travel I tell the places where I go. But I don’t travel to be able to contribute, even if this sometimes helps my curiosity to choose places I’ve never been. And I enjoy it a lot. (@EmeT)

• In this light, Local guides could be seen as not only “explorers, wayfinders, dwellers, or cartographers [who] navigate and chart an environment using mapping technologies, but also [individuals that] test spatial possibilities in an active interaction with a map” (Wilmott et al., 2016: 20):

  When you love to move around your place and explore the new possibilities and share the news to others, helping them to understand the places in a much better way then local guides are the ones who work to keep that passion on run. (@Nada)

• Exploring new spatial possibilities is a source of fun (Woodyer, 2012). For many, VGI contributions actively engage them in discovering hidden features and interacting with the environment. Local guide @Ayali, for instance, became a guide because she enjoys feeling like a tourist in her own city: “It is one of the best hobbies I could have found … as I have become more observant of the world around me.” In this way, partaking in this program can carry a sense of defamiliarization.

The Jargon File (Raymond and Steele, 1996) defines a hacker as “a person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and stretching their capabilities.” Accordingly, hacking is typically driven by “an inquisitive passion,” and often an “individualized inventive discovery” (Coleman, 2013: 3). Similarly, Local Guides’ contributions can reflect self-interest, as with @Tyler Groenendal, whose reviews resemble a Michelin Guide for onion rings (Marini, 2018). As such, they can take a self-determining role in creating and playing with the data, rather than simply following guidelines to earn points.

Technological excellence and efficacy

Hackers treat their work as “mental gymnastics” (Torvalds, 2001: xv), pursuing hacking for its practical utility and social value. As the Unix Philosophy puts it, “you must have thought software was worthy of your passions once” (Himanen, 2001: 25). Engagement in hacking is thus justified by industrial logic—pursuing technological excellence—and civic logic—aiming to generate public value. Motivation in open collaboration similarly highlights efficacy as a key driver of volunteer participation, especially when work generates public value (Hennig, 2020).

Likewise, contributing to Google Maps can be fulfilling for many Local Guides, who see improving the platform as a way to create public value. @Dawar explains:

I always had a dream to help people and it came true with the Google Maps where millions of people are getting help from my contributions to find their required routes and destinations and to get authentic informations about the places what they are looking for. (@Dawar)

Many Local Guides recognize that their VGI can reach a vast audience. They take pride in their activities, valuing “the satisfaction of knowing that their work has helped an enormous number of other people” (Elder-Vass, 2016: 208). As @Budio notes, “we ‘invest’ a little contribution, and we will earn everlasting happiness because many people will be helped by our past contribution.” This perceived efficacy is enduring, as guides’ contributions remain on Google Maps, cumulatively constituting the database of global experiences.

Google Maps strategically harnesses this aspect of the hacker ethic, framing Local Guides’ contributions as of social worth, as shown in the program's help center overview:

Local Guides is a global community of explorers who write reviews, share photos, answer questions, add or edit places, and check facts on Google Maps. Millions of people rely on contributions from Local Guides to decide where to go, what to do, and how to get there. (Google, 2025a)

Furthermore, Google Maps notifies Local Guides when their contributions reach key milestones; for instance, I received an email when one of my uploads surpassed 5000 views:

Your photo is helping in a big way, Congrats! Your post just reached a new milestone. It's now been viewed over 5000 times, helping lots of people get the information they need. (Google Maps)

The perceived efficacy inspires many Local Guides to ensure the accuracy of their contributions, particularly in a context where fake reviews are rampant on Maps (Noone and Bhandari, 2024).

This disposition also reduces the importance of monetary rewards: the value of hacking lies in “writing and contributing code for no apparent compensation other than the personal gratification that comes from doing something that helps someone else” (Weber, 2005: 131). Many Local Guides share this mindset, prioritizing contributions to technological excellence and social value over earning points or badges. As @PaulPav notes, badges and recognition are “just a side effect of contributing—they’re not the reason for doing it,” while @Guco calls his “salary the satisfaction of seeing a better Google Map,” and @suleman adds, “It is all about helping others.”

Inclusivity and care

A core principle of the hacker ethic is that hackers oppose Internet discrimination and promote the free flow of information (Bergquist et al., 2011: 4). They strive to make information equally accessible to all. In the Geoweb, the principle of free information is fundamental, with its logic centered on the right to distribute rather than the right to exclude (Crampton, 2009).

Instances of Local Guides enact egalitarian ideals by prioritizing contributions that support social minorities, especially for the disabled, LGBTQ+ community, and vegetarians. Google Maps, as a mediated representation, reflects and perpetuates relations of power (Massey, 2009). Google Maps primarily serves the majority, emphasizing factors such as price, décor, and ratings. As businesses curate their profiles to attract customers and maximize profits, the needs of marginalized groups are often overlooked. Additionally, geographic information from the Global South is markedly underrepresented (Graham and Dittus, 2022), a disparity reinforced by Google Maps’ role in shaping which aspects of space are highlighted or ignored (Luque-Ayala and Neves Maia, 2019).

In response to “data inequality,” some Local Guides actively collect information serving marginalized communities—wheelchair ramps, accessible elevators, unisex toilets, food banks, and vegan options. According to a Google blog (Blair-Goldensohn, 2020), Local Guides have contributed over 500 million wheelchair accessibility updates. Following advice from guides on the Connect forum's Idea Exchange Board, Google Maps turns to display a wheelchair icon to indicate accessibility and allows guides to add “LGBTQ-friendly” and “Transgender Safe Space” attributes (Dijk, 2018). Moreover, with branded places dominating visibility on Google Maps, some Local Guides use their reviews to promote local businesses. As @Falgun noted,

It is really important we help small businesses to flourish by buying from local shops and helping them to go digital to stay connected with the customers. We can educate them about the importance of reviews to boost their confidence and suggest areas where they can change and improve. (@ Falgun)

Google Maps also leverages Local Guides’ commitment to information inclusivity through “mapathons.” For instance, in 2021, Google launched the “Local Loves Challenge,” encouraging Local Guides to support restaurants, shops, and service providers in their communities to enhance their visibility (Bhandari and Noone, 2023: 202). Similarly, in November 2022, the “Community Challenge” had guides from national teams to produce VGI on local businesses, competing to see which country could generate the most contributions for small enterprises (DeniGu, 2022). However, framing these contributions as acts of local support and care functions as a strategic mechanism for Google Maps to collect spatial data that “would otherwise be significantly more difficult and expensive to collect” (Tarr and Alvarez León, 2019: 89).

Reputation and recognition

As Himanen (2001: 51) states, “one cannot actually understand why some hackers use their leisure for developing programs that they give openly to others without seeing that they have strong social motives.” In open collaboration, the visibility of individual contributions to the entire community fosters reciprocal relations of recognition, reputation, and mutual support, rendering such social motivations a central driving force (Kollock, 1999). This also holds true for many Local Guides, who engage in the program for a sense of belonging, reciprocity, and recognition:

You can help people here in the forum for any need and you can find someone that cares about your questions. This is Google Local Guides's spirit with this program: to be part of a community with common interests, where the prize is nothing but the pleasure of sharing and learning. (@davidno)

Community-based participation embodies a form of “neighbors helping each other” (Weber, 2005: 131). For many Local Guides, the act of contributing appears to be influenced by content they have previously received from others, as noted by @Isitua:

The reviews and photos posted on that place made me to make an informed decision and helped me in my course. I thought to myself to return the goodwill since I share the same passion for taking photos and writing reviews. (@Isitua)

Reciprocity also encompasses forms of informal mentorship. Local Guide Connect functions as a diverse support network, comprising multiple sub-boards for tutorials and advice exchange, where experienced Local Guides frequently offer nuanced guidance.

Yet, alongside this ethos of reciprocity, “there is also an elitist stance that places an extremely high premium on self-reliance, individual achievement, and meritocracy” (Coleman, 2013: 106). As Raymond (1998) observes, hackers “may not work to get reputation, but the reputation is a real payment with consequences if you do the job well.” Similarly, the forum is structured around a relative meritocracy, where Local Guides are judged solely on the value of their creations. Each month, Google designates a featured Local Guide as a champion for their community contributions, showcases their experiences through interviews, and encourages peer recognition.

Starting in 2020, Google Maps recognized about 50 “Guiding Stars” annually through a voting process for their contributions to the Local Guides Program, honoring the most successful and influential contributors. These titles—ranging from “Helpful Hero,” “Inclusive Mapper,” “Creative Contributor,” “Community Builder,” “Local Business Champion,” to “Sustainability Star”—reflect the core values celebrated by the community, including helpfulness, inclusivity, friendliness, and creativity, resonating with the justificatory logics underpinning the hacker ethic. In addition to official awards, Local Guides have also initiated a leaderboard known as “Top 100 Local Guides” (2025), a hall-of-fame-like virtual space showcasing the most dedicated Local Guides and most-viewed photos. Award-winning Local Guides value peer recognition, and the meritocratic culture motivates further contributions, just as Guiding Star @Gezen shares:

Yes, it was a great feeling to be a guiding star. Being one of the best in the world among millions of users. According to me, it was one of the most beautiful achievements in my life. Keeping it up I want…. (@Gezen)

The dismissal of capitalist exchange

Instances of Local Guides exemplify the hacker ethic, yet this ethos is not universally shared. Indeed, the Local Guides program exemplifies a form of “hacker cartography” (McConchie, 2015), where participants are situated within the hybridity of volunteerism and capitalism. Google's appropriation of free labor has been repeatedly questioned,

I know that google guides don’t get paid. But google advertises and earns a tremendous amount of money on ads etc. Who makes google guides great? The people contributing. Google maps is monetizing the info collected from postings and views right? (@Divedoc)

Nothing on Google is truly free. They are selling your data and making money off of that plus advertising revenue. When you contribute as a Local Guide (for free), they can then use that information to make even more money. (@Unicorn)

Many Local Guides have inquired on Connect about the possibility of monetizing their contributions, typically receiving the response from Googlers or forum moderators that “Local Guides are not paid and may not earn money for their contributions, per our program rules.” Furthermore, the ambiguity surrounding the criteria for tangible perks leads many Guides to question if, or when, they might receive any benefits for their efforts, despite high levels of dedication. As @dracko1 puts it, “[this program brings] free labor for Google and saves them millions of dollars, since it is a worldwide thing.”

Nevertheless, many adherents of the hacker work ethic reject such critiques, as they begin from the belief that their free labor is superior to paid labor. Indeed, the very essence of the hacker work ethic lies in preserving this distinction from economic imperatives. It is about the belief that food—a metaphor for basic survival—is the least important element in the trio of food, fun, and friends. As Himanen (2001: 54) argues, “the original hacker ethic was primarily a matter of what place money is accorded as a motive and what types of its influence on other motives should be avoided.” The hacker ethic emphasizes the preservation of values such as passion and peer recognition, allowing monetary gain only insofar as it does not undermine these principles. Accordingly, Local Guides who internalize this ethic and embrace the non-monetary nature of their contributions often resist the introduction of capitalist exchange, exemplified by @Gezen:

Actually I imagine that commenting on maps is something for money and I would never comment. Because the income to be earned from there would bother me. (@Gezen)

Thus, “freely given labour, even if it is enjoyable, will only continue to be given if the labour process is not linked with other dissatisfiers that outweigh the benefits to be had from the labour itself” (Elder-Vass, 2016: 231). The main concern is that introducing wages or employment relations could erode the inspirational logic of Local Guides’ “hacking,” as professionalization may impose corporate constraints and curtail their creative autonomy, as has been foreseen by @AG1959:

I think that losing the freedom to be free (it's not a word game), means subjecting ourselves to ties that would make us lose the solidarity and contributory focus. The goal of this community is to help (with successes and sometimes, also some involuntary mistakes), contribute, and always give sincere and objective opinions. Receiving a remuneration would also unfortunately make us subjective, since every action would no longer be spontaneous and would become calculated and commercialized. (@AG1959)

Moreover, the capitalist pursuit of “optimization” might pressure Local Guides to upload as much information as possible to maximize capital accumulation. Under such conditions, city exploration risks resembling a form of patrolling or hunting, as participants scour the urban landscape for unmapped sites to feed into Google Maps. They also express concern about a potential influx of disruptive participants,

Money would invite even more spammers to find ways to abuse the system, likely to the detriment of current Local Guides as well as those who benefit from our contributions on Google Maps. (@Christopher)

Another concern voiced by some Local Guides is that introducing market exchange could commodify what was once a gift. Raymond (1998) states that “the society of open-source hackers is, in fact, a gift culture,” wherein codes created by one individual are gifted to fellows for learning and growth. It is a belief that the values of altruism, helpfulness, and reciprocity would be discarded if Local Guides were to sell VGI to Google Maps. As indicated by @Varshney, local guides are “volunteers [who] don’t get paid, not because they’re worthless, but because they’re priceless,” whereas “by supplying goods that moral standards define as invaluable for a price in the market, individuals prostitute themselves and destroy the central value of what they have to offer” (Blau, 2017: 63). This reflects a broader point: “some of the good things in life are corrupted or degraded if turned into commodities” (Sandel, 2012: 13).

The introduction of a financial reward mechanism is also believed to devalue Google Maps as a public good and diminish many Local Guides’ commitment to technological excellence. As @EmeT implies, if Local Guides were to be paid based on what they contribute:

[It] would be “the end of a free App”. We currently have a free and ad-free App that is constantly updated thanks to the contributions of Local Guides like us. In the past, before Google Maps, I paid €100 each year for two updates, one every 6 months, of my navigation system. If Google were to pay 150 million contributors based on their contributions, a free app would no longer be viable. I see three options: a free App with advertising; an annual subscription; a pay as you go subscription. (@EmeT)

Many Local guides share the belief that Google Maps should remain free and accessible to all without the interference of advertisements, as their contributions are meaningful only when everyone can access the information within the ethos of reciprocity. However, if a financial rewards system were introduced, many believe that Google Maps would have to redesign its business model, and the “Bazaar model” could be supplanted by a “Cathedral model” (Raymond, 2001).

A “hacker community” within a capitalist framework

Within Google Maps, certain Local Guides exemplify the hacker work ethic, enacting an anti-capitalist ethos inside a closed software, a capitalist service of one of the world's richest digital economies. Unlike the enclosure of the commons, where hackers’ outputs are appropriated by corporations, or the institutional and commercial incursions as seen in OSM, the Local Guide Program begins as a pseudo-open collaboration originating from a capitalist firm. An endogenous tension emerges as Google Maps translates the hacker ethic and embeds a “hacker community” that mobilizes free labor to sustain a quasi-commons within its capitalist framework. Here, the term “community” should not be taken to overgeneralize every participant of the program as a hacker sharing the same work ethic; rather, it refers to F/OSS-like socio-technical relationships centered on passion, gift, and reputation, which constitute a contributive subset of the program.

As McQuire (2019: 154) notes regarding user participation, “it is Google's structured shaping of such participation—enabling it while setting constraints on it—through a combination of technical, cultural, and legal protocols that defines its particular enterprise.” A “hacker community” within a capitalist framework represents this combination, and understanding this chimeric cultural landscape requires foregrounding Google's central role in the program.

Google Maps has made significant investments in capturing street view and satellite imagery, and has acquired authoritative data from over 1000 third-party sources worldwide. Additionally, it has developed advanced automated algorithms to ensure updates and visualizations keep pace with real-world changes to roads, businesses, and addresses (Lookingbill and Russell, 2019). Departing from the model of outsourcing maintenance to unpaid users, Google strategically adopts a “hacker” stance, offering these investments as gifts and cultivating collaborative participation. It provides the digital infrastructure, hires paid staff to foster social ties and moderate the forum, and organizes meetups, festivals, competitions, and nomination programs. These actions give rise to a “hacker community,” which in turn contributes to VGI. Thus, Google Maps characterizes what Fourcade and Kluttz (2020) theorize as a “Maussian bargain”: the platform offers gifts of indeterminate value, accompanied by considerable moral and social imperatives to reciprocate, while users’ contributions operate both as return gifts to the platform and as new gifts directed toward other users. This dual role generates new obligations of reciprocity, triggering further cycles of exchange that cascade and expand exponentially into a broader economic and socio-technical network, with no clear point at which the bargain can be considered fair and finished to all parties involved.

The “hacker community” operates as socially lateral but economically vertical: Google maintains full ownership of Maps as closed-source software. “There is a striking contrast between Google's willingness to let users ‘play’ by making ‘mash-ups’, and the strict enforcement it applies not only to protecting its source code but also the geographic data generated on its platform” (McQuire, 2019: 158). According to terms and conditions of Google Maps, customers are not allowed to “copy, modify, create a derivative work of, reverse engineer, decompile, translate, disassemble, or otherwise attempt to extract any or all of the source code,” whereas “Google and its Affiliates may use and retain this data [collected from users] to provide and improve Google products and services” (Google, 2025b).

This asymmetrical power relation reveals that Google Maps, within this hacker community, is in the position of what Castells (2013: 45) terms a “switcher,” having “the ability to connect and ensure the cooperation of different networks by sharing common goals and combining resources.”

Switching power underpins profit generation, as data monetization relies on “a combination of capture and repurposing” (Beauvisage and Mellet, 2020: 91). Google Maps generates revenue primarily through its integration with Google Ads, which acts as an intermediary between users, website owners, and advertisers. Google Ads draws on a wide range of user data, including the VGI contributions of Local Guides as well as broader user activities across Google services, to build predictive user profiles. This capability attracts advertisers seeking to target messages precisely to the interests and needs of potential customers. Simultaneously, website owners can participate in the AdSense program, selling advertising space for these targeted campaigns. By strategically placing advertisements in spaces that maximize exposure to potential consumers, Google is able to capture substantial profits. Zuboff (2019) and Gentzel et al. (2021) have raised concerns about Google Maps’ record of users’ daily stops, modes of transportation, parking locations, and arrival times for more effective advertisement placements and increased revenue.

Moreover, Google Maps generates revenue through its API, which allows developers to integrate Google Maps into their own applications and websites for a fee. The pricing is based on API usage, with each core service corresponding to “billable events” (Google Developers, 2025). After a monthly free quota, usage is charged via a tiered pricing scheme. By leveraging the high-quality data collectively produced by Google and its Local Guides, the API underpins the design and development of numerous contemporary services.

Thus, Google Maps is an “inducement gift” (Elder-Vass, 2016: 159), one that is “given in order to induce a commercial transaction, or a series of such transactions, that are collectively of greater value to the giver than the original gift.” The chimeric cultural landscape in which “money commodity and gift relations [can] coexist in symbiosis” (Barbrook, 1998) is exemplified in this case, as illustrated by Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Illustration of how Google Maps is positioned in both a “gift network” and a capitalist network.

On the left-hand side of the diagram, Google Maps establishes a “gift network” structured around the hacker ethic, where VGI circulates among Local Guides, driven by passion, reputation, and reciprocity. This corresponds to what Nachtwey and Schaupp (2024) describe as “peer-to-peer gift exchange.” Within this network, two highly entangled forms of “peer-to-platform gift exchange” also take place, whereby Google Maps incorporates VGI from Local Guides as free labor, while simultaneously captures behavioral surplus as obligatory gifts from all users (Nachtwey and Schaupp, 2024). As such, the data that Google receives in return includes VGI, individual user data (service-for-user data), and data generated through interactions among users on the platform.

The right-hand side of Figure 1 illustrates how Google Maps switches to external nodes and integrates itself into Google's broader profit network, where the value generated through gift exchange is ultimately repurposed for profit. This profit network operates within a capitalist framework, where the maximization of capital underpins all social relations.

Google Maps does not conceal its scheme of “capture and repurposing” from Local Guides, many of whom knowingly contribute VGI that would be repurposed elsewhere. Therefore, the symbiosis between the two networks does not rely on the expression of only one kind of economic culture, but rather on the non-rival nature of the “information gifts,” which can be used by multiple users simultaneously without diminishing their value (Elder-Vass, 2016: 207; Jones and Tonetti, 2020). Counterintuitively, data repurposed within the profit network can even enhance the use value of the geographic information originally generated in the gift network.

Accordingly, some Local Guides perceive that the exchange value of data within the profit network is reinvested in developing features that support map-making and official activities fostering community cohesion. Moreover, through its API, Google Maps has become the most widely used mapping service and has powered numerous third-party applications. Arguably, Google Maps functions as an “infrastructuralized platform” (Plantin, 2018), providing a service on which contemporary societies increasingly rely. This mega-node enables some Local Guides to perceive their VGI as generating multifaceted value when repurposed, producing benefits across networks while simultaneously advancing public interests. In this sense, free labor offered as reciprocal gifts that add value to this spatial infrastructure also further legitimizes its private appropriation of personal data from all users as reciprocal gifts: the more valuable the initial gift, the stronger the normative obligation to give back.

Nevertheless, the endogenous tension between the hacker ethic and capitalist culture is not eliminated by such a symbiosis. Google does not incorporate all suggested modifications from Local Guides into its base map; rather, it selectively responds to contributions that both reflect the hacker ethic and generate profit. For instance, developing map features that support information inclusivity can attract more marginalized users to Google Maps, thereby activating both “direct” and “indirect network effects” (Mansell and Steinmueller, 2020). Consequently, “as a digital platform, Google Maps functions not by preventing user ‘tinkering’ but also by directing it down certain channels” (McQuire, 2019: 158). As such, Google Maps also has the “programming power” within the “hacker community,” the ability to “program/reprogram the network(s) in terms of the goals assigned to the network” (Castells, 2013: 45).

Conclusion

Hacking is hacked. As Kirkpatrick (2002: 164) observes, Himanen (2001) presents “a superficial idealization of computer hackers as the source of an ‘oppositional ethic.’” A more nuanced view follows Boltanski and Chiapello's (2007: 20) contention that “it is pointless to search for a clear separation between impure ideological constructs, intended to serve capitalist accumulation, and pure, utterly uncompromised ideas, which would make it possible to criticize it.” Capitalism must draw on external cultural and ideological resources that hold persuasive power within its socio-political context, and “it needs its enemies, people whom it outrages and who are opposed to it, to find the moral supports it lacks and to incorporate mechanisms of justice whose relevance it would otherwise have no reason to acknowledge” (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2007: 27).

The recuperation of the hacker ethic into capitalism is not new but has unfolded continuously since its very emergence. According to Delfanti and Söderberg (2018), the hacking of “hacking” occurs at three progressive levels: the appropriation of an individual, technology, or community by for-profit or institutional interests; the mutual evolution of hacker movements and related industries or institutions (Turner, 2006); and the absorption of the hacker ethic into the spirit of the times (Barron, 2013: 19). The novelty of this study lies in revealing how, at the level of the spirit of capitalism, the hacker ethic is recuperated as a moral reservoir through which data-driven capitalism legitimizes itself and mobilizes the very actors who produce behavioral surplus and fill in the computational gap.

The recuperation must be “rooted in organizational, institutional, or legal mechanisms which give them a ‘real’ existence” (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2007: xxii). Google Maps exemplifies how to embed a “hacker community” within its capitalist framework. It mobilizes hacking as both means and ends, incites peer recognition and reputation, brands itself as a quasi-commons, and simultaneously takes a “hacker” stance, activating a Maussian bargain while monopolizing switching and programming power. This case demonstrates that data extraction is not necessarily dispossession but can constitute “accumulation by gift” (Fourcade and Kluttz, 2020). It is not mere crowdsourcing, but can instead take the form of community-sourcing, leveraging the hacker ethic and investing in F/OSS-like socio-technical relationships among participants to legitimize the exploitation of free labor along artistic, civic, popular, and industrial logics.

The hacker ethic appears to share a certain affinity with the logic of data-driven capitalism. Hacking inherently involves repurposing, and its outputs are designed to be recursively repurposed, when the hacker ethic centers on the moral and pragmatic superiority inherent in repurposing. In parallel, data-driven capitalism relies on capture and repurposing, whereby data collected in one context has to be switched to external networks to generate economic value. We must remain attentive to how the recuperation of critiques can establish a justification regime for data-driven capitalism, whose foundation in anti-capitalism produces a counter-intuitive scenario: the exploitation of free labor is framed as morally superior to conventionally “evil” salaried labor. How, then, can we critically engage with this form of exploitation when paying for free labor is apparently a faux pas?