Mechanical Turk – Is it for you?
This week’s Tech Tip is about the Amazon website, Mechanical Turk. Basically, Mechanical Turk is a website that offers to pay a fixed amount for a specific job (HIT) done.
To highlight some of the main pros and cons of the website, I’d like to present this week’s Tip in the form of a story.
Read Full Article Click Here
Unfortunately, unless it’s a federal or federally-assisted contract, the independent contractor can be paid at any rate s/he will accept. What’s actually going on, of course, is that the worker is performing piecework that would ordinarily be subject to minimum wage and overtime pay requirements. However, since the services are performed independently, outside the scope of the employer’s direct control, on the contractor’s equipment and with an alleged potential for contractor gain or loss, the workers do appear to be contractors as defined by the Fair Labor Standards Act. Maybe not smart ones, but contractors all the same.
Without a doubt the Mechanical Turk site takes advantage of a desperate work force and “independent contractors” that earn less than the federal minimum wage. We should be protected from corporate vampires. I wonder if Amazon sends them a 1099 at tax time?
I earned better money at my paper route in 1965.If you’re house bound and broke it could provide transportation money so maybe you could find a better paying job.Wow. I agree it does seem like a way around paying wages, especially if an employee is terminatng employment and putting in to this type of system. However, independent contractors are always an exceptions from wages as you stated. I hope this type of stuff does not continue. BTW als remember that not only were they data mining your pesonal info but the ones that were facebook related may also be mining info on your friends. If this generates unwante spam they may be in violation of ohter laws.
i think this is yet another attempt by corporations to run over individuals, so that they(the big company) can make more money.
this is a shame that the ordinary citizen is being abused like this.
thanks for the tip.
Mechanical Turk is just another BS “job opportunity” for people who believe that they can “get rich quick” by doing almost nothing for their pay. Such people deserve the treatment they get at sites like Mechanical Turk.
Come on, people! To make money, you gotta get up off your wide, fat..., and Do Real Work, either with your hands, or your brain, or both. There’s no easy way out, unless you have rich relatives…
Thank you very much for writing such a nice article. Me to got related with Labor laws in Japan and I must say. This is what I have been thinking about such offer on websites.
It is strange they can start website and write whatever they please, but when you ask Labor office or related person they do not comment.
Once again, your article is very good. I wish many people could read it.
better set up a phantom e-mail if you use any of these “hits”.
I will not buy anything from Amazon again as long as they continue the abuse depicted in this article. There seems to be no end to the ripping off of the American worker in this country. More and more supposedly reputable businesses want workers for less and less. Expecting an educated, motivated, punctual, efficient worker to produce more and more for less and less. No benefits, no social security contribution, no retirement, (except for the top management)and no real hope for advancement. It’s time we the people strike back at these businesses the best way we can. That would be to boycott them altogether until they do better by us. They have nothing without workers or customers.
Lets not forget a government that no longer represents the public at large. The powers that be in Washington are there for businesses and what benefits them. Are borders are open for one and all, legal immigration from our southern border with Mexico is a complete joke. We don’t need reform, we need the government to enforce the laws that are already on the books. Illegal aliens are NOT immigrants!
It is definitely not a minimum wage job. It is the type of job that people in the third world would love to have, since they can live on $3 a day.
That being said, the times they are a changin’. The Internet hadscreated a world marketplace, for informatioin, goods and now services.
I can buy stuff online from all over the world, often at a fraction of the cost of what I would pay locally, and without sales tax. It is only reasonable that I should be able to work, if I wish, for a fraction of what others do. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.
Quite beyond that, one of the reasons that those of us lucky enough to live in the developed world, live so very well, is that we have put tight strictures on business, in the form of labor laws and union contracts. We cannot force these on the less developed world, they have to develop them on their own. And the will in time.
In the meantime, we are in a global marketplace and need to stop pontificating about labor laws and minimum wage. We are in a huge recession and lots of people are darned glad to be able to make $2 or $3 an hour rather than be forced to live on the streets. Granted, lots of others are not, and that is their choice. But preventing those who want to work at low wages from doing so, is NOT protecting them. It is protecting the folks who won’t work that hard to make just a little money. And like it or not that is NOT what capitalism is about.
Finally, I know a LOT of people who spend enormous amounts of time online playing games, plying chat rooms, surfing porn sights, and generally wasting a lot of time. If Amazon can get even a few of them to use just a little of that time, doing something remotely useful instead, I think it is all to the good.
I will not support organized crime. Therefore, I am selling all of my Amazon stock!
WOW never heard of this until I read this article. It sounded horrid, so I setup an account to check it out...... WAY WORSE than the article made it sound. It almost seemed to have some positive aspects.....NOPE. Complete trash; you get paid nothing to look at spam. I just wasted 25 min of my life verifying that MECHANICAL TURK IS A JOKE! Do not waste your time, it’s equivalent to actually wasting time reading every message in your spam folder of your email account.
Interesting. See ‘Appredeem’, a ‘bookmarklet’ for iPhone & iPod. They pay you instantly to your PayPal account, 15 USD cents per ‘Hitlet’. But ‘work’ only the free apps and analyze them as you did with the Turk. You can delete the apps that you verify. Warning: don’t buy apps you don’t need.
You’d have to be pretty desperate to take a job like that if you’re out of work. Still, if you are retired or disabled and liked spending most days in front of your PC then I suppose this might be one way to pay for that item you’ve been wanting. With a little patience and a few hours daily you could accumulate enough cash for something. I’m underemployed and a computer hardware geek and feel some attraction to anything that puts extra cash in the bank but this isn’t the way to do it for me personally. Thanks for the great article.
We mess around with Amazon Turk on weekends, or while watching TV at night and while it does not pay any bills, it does put a little “free” money into our stock accounts.
So when are you going to tell the windows users about the patch Windbloows is planning for them ? It as to do with the windows guinteed advantage crap and IT WILL SHUT DOWN their computers if it thinks something is not totally legal and then they will have to call MS to get it running again . . Awww gee avoid the panic and convert to Ubuntu 10.10 now LOL and add virtual box put the windows inside of it and run it totally safe from MS screwing it up again ! !
Good article as it seems so many people can be so easily dooped on the internet and take what they read as gospel, that articles like this then are dearly needed as a counter.
I agree completely with your article about the amazon TURK link. I worked for an entire day answering dumb questions, and made $14.83. I am a disabled 63 year old vet in a wheelchair, my disability check barely covers my rent, utilities, and a meager amount of food. I, like you tried to contact amazon about the link, but was never given a reply.
Blatantly pure exploitation of probably the most vulnerable segment of American society at the present time.
Shame on you, Amazon.com for playing this hideous and loathsome trick on people who deserve a hand up, not a boot in the face!I feel it is exploitive. Amazon may be moot for many of us before long anyway. They are planning to cut off affiliates who live in states that are going to require Amazon to keep track of taxes they plan to put on internet affiliate sales. The federal level taxing may be some time away if my congresspeople’s opinions mean anything. If they decide to do that in my state as their recent email to me suggested, I won’t be buying anything else form them either. So far, Amazon is the only one of the affiliate programs I deal with that has threatened this.
When figuring out the profitability of any work found and performed through this site, one must also consider the time invested in sorting through all the ‘Scams/etc.’ in order to find the few legitimate offerings. This further dilutes the profitability of working through this site not to mention the vulnerability to scams, virus’, trojans, etc., etc., etc.
after looking through the site, I can definitely say, it looks like mostly opt in spam, and “spam for us” jobs.
there do appear to be some valid hits, though potentially more intensive than they appear at first (audio transcription can be QUITE time consuming, and I see a number of hits for that).it might be a way to earn a little extra side cash for some stuff on amazon, but it certainly doesn’t look like it would be a viable form of full time employment.
Since the inception of such “services” most have been scams and shell-games, similar to “Mycleanpc.com which is red-lettered by a number of services.
gIt is yet another way for the Data mining operators to gather your info!
Those that have that much time on their hands and do not mind some turd looking into their data base-have at it.
Do not complain when you see your savings account dwindle and your credit card show bogus charges!
A penny earned this way is NOT a penny saved!”...otherwise [you’re] stuck with the Amazon gift card...”
“...they felt I was not a legitamate(?) enough writer...”
I disagree. You’re legitimate enough. You make sound points, but could use a proofreader.
Maybe you could list THAT job on Mechanical Turk?
Mechanical Turks seems to me to be a way for companies to opt out of paying a fair wage for work done and I am surprised that Amazon is offering this service at all.
Just another rip-off of Americans trying to just get by in this terrible economy. Why is the Labor Department not involved, or the Inter-state Commerce Commission, or even the Justice Department as this is clearly fraud - 0.05 cents per hit which takes an hour to complete - they pay better in India.
As usual, great article! Thanks for keeping us informed.
Just another scam. I gave the survey sites a good, long, fair chance, and the same fact applies: pennies for a week’s work. They are paid handsome sums by companies wanting surveys done for them, and the pay the suckers who actually do the surveys hundredths of pennies.
Only a first class moron would bother to even consider participating in this scam, especially after having the facts presented in this article. If your boss puts you in this situation, go IMMEDIATELY to Unemployment and apply. What he “offers” is not a job. He no longer employs you, by no fault of your own, but by HIS choosing. You are now unemployed, and you are now eligible for unemployment. If he doesn’t want to pay you for your work and ditches you, he can pay the unemployment premiums.
Well you can make more money walking dogs.
I think that this form of escaping the minimum wage should be made illegal. and that jobs on the internet should also be held to the minimum wage standard. In my personal opinion Companies who use this approach to save a buck at the expense of the worker are low life companies. You should vote with your wallet and not do business with them or with any company that facilitates them in this effort to skirt the minimum wage laws.
exploitative. As your well researched and well written piece so adequately points out. Thanks.
david
are45What’s to keep an out-of-country button puncher from cutting a deal with a US based slug to set up a bogus account?
If Amazon does not routinely vet the ads for meeting their SOPs, they probably do not bother to do any IP logging/verification either.Remember, you get what you pay for. Since this site pays very little, I’d wager that the accuracy of the results amount to about the same. IMHO, it’s a huge waste of time.
Piecework is almost always a scam. In this case there is interstate commerce involved and the scam is for pennies. You’ll not find anyone te protect you.
Definitely exploitative.
The web equivalent of the “independent contractor” workaround to minimum wage. It is basically a well respected scam just like all those other none web scams.
Baseline shift. If Amazon can hold onto this cheap labor concept long enough they can morph it into a standard for wage crushing. Down the road the unwashed masses think of it as normal. Very Un-American. Very Anti-decent wage. Scripts should be written, this site needs a take down.
HeadPin
Who says there is no such thing as a free lunch? Obviously, the requesters on Mechanical Turk and similar “opportunities” are basically getting their work done for close to nothing. Sometimes, the unsuspecting and unaware “worker” ends up paying for the work to get done. It is too bad that their seems to be almost no legitimate on-line work out there--contract or not.
Yeah, overall it looks a lot like a scam. I foresee kids playing Mech turk for candy/video game money if at all. I tried a couple hits and can say that they’re not onerous, but they are repetitive and time consuming. I’ve racked up close to a buck in my account. Heh.
It DOES violate the SPIRIT of the minimum wage laws even if it doesn’t violate the letter.
What’s REALLY going to shock people is when Uncle Sugar decides to take his due.
This is just another scam and one more of the thousand cuts being suffered by Labor in America.
As an independant contractor myself,in the State of Tennessee ,I can see how this could be alouring to most unemployed folx. The Federal minimum wage is taken well advantage of here,even forced up on Skilled tradesmen.If the Mechanical Turk website was a really lagitimate site they’d offer to let contractors “Bid” on the jobs listed,then accept or deny the bids,seems like the old school sweat shop hustle to me.Like the way they do waitresses,$2.25 an hour “Pluss” tips.
Then you gotta shair your tips with the other waitresses and hostesses.you come out makin about $5 an hour.
I don’t think I’ll be doing any Mechanical Turk sites anytime soon.Although I believe this site exploits people’s need for work, people should be as wise as you and do the math before sinking too much time into this kind of work.
The concept is good, but from your story it is obviously a waste of time. Just like fiverr.com you are suppose to get 5 dollars for every job completed, they keep your money up to 35 dollars I think… then pay you. To get work is nearly impossible since you only have maybe an hour before your post gets burried 4 or 5 pages deep and people are not looking past the first 2 pages.
As much money that companies are making such as Google they should be able to set up a legit site like that ...that will pay good for your efforts. That would be great. Many jobs could be created even the job of checking the ligitimacy of the submitted jobs. Thank of the green effect how less air would be poluted if less people drove to work. Google could surely afford this.PC gaming suits me better, being an older gamer I prefer the pc. The game controllers are more cumbersome to operate, for me. Besides I am not tieing up the TV for several hours a day, this makes the rest of my family happy. Being that I am in close quaters with my 22 inch monitor and 5.1 speaker system my gaming is more personal and it rocks. Fallout 3, Call of Duty and Oblivion makes you feel you are there in the game, it is great.
A sleazy way for businesses to obtain cheap labor.
The question at hand is, in my opinion, how far does one permit intrusion into their personal life. I do not put my personal information on the internet except in situations where I am certain that it will not compromise the security of my personal info. To date, I’ve been fortunate but then, I do not MySpace, Facebook and do not randomly ‘go into the wild’ of the Internet.
That said, T does not sound as if it has sufficient privacy security in place, having more in common with Facebook than with a trusted, certified safe site.
Contract labor is a legitimate work form as long as the contractor can meet their tax obligations and actually make an income with which they are satisfied. Along with minimum wage requirements come Time and Labor statutes that require periodic breaks that I find limiting. I would rather work to a point of completion before ‘breaking’ whenever possible. This was one reason I found working for Walmart frustrating. he money wasn’t great but I did accumulate a healthy Walmart stock account.If someone is not able to work within the parameters reqyired of a contractor, they should avoid MT>
Sounds like a bait and switch labor scam. An employer trying to get out of paying for those little annoying taskes that need to be done.
this be very bad deal - I tried this sort of thing once for a quick answer service for any question posed by interenet or phone - the pay was so low I could have made more money picking up empty soda cans and it took so much time that the hourly wage was just plain insulting to me and I worked when minimum wage was only $0.85 per hour.(1965) Shame on these people for screwing over the lowest paid people in the organization by “farming out their work”. I guess we better all get used to a lower standard of living unless we somehow can break through to some kind of management level job where the ceo’s get megabucks for running their companies into the ground.
I’ve seen some similar scams before;
basically they’re legal, but ‘legit’,
if you know what I mean.
Amazon should be ashamed of themselves,
for taking advantage of people.
Specifically, think about those people that can’t
get anything but an Amazon “gift” card.
(Some ‘gift’, huh?)
IF you want to get a handle on this,
try to ‘report’ those HITS that violate the TOS.PS—So what’s the difference between those HITS,
& you requiring MY info, to comment?I wanted to take the time to tank you for writing this article, and getting it published for the pulblic to see. I would not have anything to do with those crooks. The whole mess is shameful. I do not believe in bigger government, nor more laws, and do not care that this is unregulated. However, I think the free press has to be free to tell the uninformed who the crooks are.
I actually work there because there is no other work. I know I am getting screwed over, but I have to find some way to gin up a little more cash to cover the bills. I don’t think anyone does it exclusively, i.e. everyone has a second source of income. I find it amazing that people can do 600 hits a day some times, but at a grand total of 20 or 30 bucks...it’s sad. I have a college degree and I am reduced to this in order to cover the phone bill.
> Is [Amazon’s Mechanical Turk] a legitimate way
> to earn some extra cash by doing easy (almost
> mindless) tasks?Yes, I think it meets the guidelines for an independent contractor, and is thus legal. You set your own hours, you pick your own tasks, you accomplish them using your own methodology.
> or is it an exploitative website that preys on a desperate work force?
Yes, it is also an exploitative website that preys on a desperate work force, most of whom have no idea what they are getting into.
[By the way, the summary for this article is wrong both in the comments section and the forums—it is showing the summary for the previous article]
Rip-off of a desperate workforce. These things should not be allowed. People won’t realize that they are working for pennies an hour until they have a lot of time invested. Disgusting....
hey, the same thing happened to me years ago. i used amazon mt to look for steve f. the lost flyer. then i too tried to earn some money, it was too hard to to earn anything so i gave it up.
it’s a shame i’d do that type of work if i could get paid, also i thought the artical was good enjoyed it.Absolutely this is a way of getting around the minimum wage. First Reagan destroyed the Unions; now what is left of being an “employee” will soon give way to everyone being an “independent contractor”; so no one has any benefits. One more blow to the middle class and further separation of wealth in this country.
I jsut quit my job, gonna get rich with this thing!
Great story, well written, I really enjoyed reading it. I love the post 54, “I just quit my job, gonna get rich with this thing!”.
Post 9 also makes a great follow-up point, “You can’t have your cake and eat it too.”...Cheap stuff comes at a price…
MTurk is definitely an “interesting new” concept to make “artificial artificial intelligence” a cheap commodity as much as possible.
Thanks a lot, geeks.com, for sharing the info and all the knowledge. Will pass this around!It seems that amazon its self need to be looked a bit closer , this is absolutely un American, as American is quickly becoming a third world nation , and trust me were on our way, or it could be the sign that we are closer then we might admit already in the relm or thrift world status.
I was selling some items on amazon fewonths ago to find out the seller has zero right on there site. I have been in business for my selffor.over 10years and because of that I know thecustomer is not always right. There are people who will take advantage of business to better them selves with out regard to laws. Amazon has given no regard to it sellers, the very backbone of there business the don’t stand behind. This is fact.
Amazon shame on you
You and Walmart destroying ,corprection HAVE destroyed theamerican why of life.We’re getting one step closer to being paid
the same wage as “employees” aka slaves in China.But wait...their employers actually feed them, house them, and provide extremely limited gov’t sponsored health care.
So MT actually is a cheaper alternative to Chinese labor.
The upside? If our labor becomes that cheap enough
maybe we will be able to manufacture electronics
within our borders again.Really…
This would be a perfect money-making opportunity for an incarcerated individual with internet access.Thanks for sharing it, it was like an eye-opener for us. Keep up the great work.
The current reputation system on Mechanical Turk is simply inadequate. The only built-in reputation metrics are the number of completed HITs and the approval rate.
Keep this in mind when discussing MechTurk, Amazon and others users of this kind of work: “The poor like luxury. The rich and intellectual love poverty.”
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