We are entitled to not have our work stolen. We're selling our labor on Mturk. If it gets stolen, that's morally and legally wrong, just like if you or I were to steal an item out of a store.
I agree with you. And if you guys want to complain to the President himself, more power to you. While you're doing that, I'll be doing HITs from requesters I trust and trying to reach out to new requesters so they become requesters I trust. If you want to make a difference in the meantime, be a little more careful on who you work for. If you have any doubts, just wait! Either they're a shitty requester who will never come back and you will miss out on a few rejections, or they're an awesome requester who will post more in the future. Either way, missing ONE new batch is not going to kill you. It's kind of hypocritical to snitch to the govvy on one requester, unless you're gonna do it for every rejection you get. How many is that?
We are entitled not to have our work stolen, to fair and timely recourse, to transparency in the worksplace in terms of evaluation of our work (with all due respect given to confidentiality agreements) amongst other things. So, how do we promote awareness of basic labor rights and standards? If we feel that Amazon has forgotten or is neglecting these standards, then reminding them is what I consider to be the first step, and reminding doesn't have to be done just through Mturk, but through their cental administration, PR departments, and by outside agencies like the Better Business Bureau, the DOL, the Internet Fraud people, etc... Practical examples: If you have done a HIT with no submit button, (or one where there is identity theft, or other illegal action) take a screen shot of your final page, the one where there is no submit button, paste it into a doc with the name of the requester and the hit id. Date it. Send it through multiple channels, with the polite request that Amazon create a structure to deal with scam requesters in such a way that the scammers effectively lose their money, privileges, etc. Ask that the money paid upfront by the requester to create and publish that hit be paid out to those workers. This can, and in my opinion, should be done in the types of hit that are ethically shoddy. Are you being asked to rip off an affiliate program? Write fake reviews so that potential customers get led astray? Email the website owners and tell them that this is being done. With your screenshots. The website owners might not appreciate the scammy requesters either... Remind Mturk that if it is receiving any money from the scammer, that money has been earned by association with the scam. The requester forfeits his money by scamming or attempting to scam, and Amazon doesn't get to keep it either. Screenshots are easy to do. Hit information is obtainable with no problem through your dashboard - the hit id info is right there with the "contact the requestor". So Amazon has forensic records of the hits going through its system, INCLUDING YOUR ANSWERS. They don't have to be in CSI to retrieve it. It's there. The thing is, MTurk has to be motivated to improve its transparency, worker appeals process and requester honesty. That is where outside pressure comes in. If indeed Mturk is getting any money at all from scammers or dishonest requesters, it is profiting from them. That is where they can and should be called on to answer for their practices.
TL;DR. LOLing too hard. If you guys think 25 cents (or 50 cents, or hell even $5) is worth all that, go right ahead. That leaves plenty of time for me and the other people that realize how asinine this all sounds to snatch the HITs that don't reject. And then you guys wonder how we "make so much money." And how we all have 99% or higher accepted rates. It's because we waste enough time trolling available HITs to pounce when the time comes, that we don't have time to sit around and complain. (Today is an exception for me in that department, but we'll blame AT&T for that.) Seriously. If some of you spent half as much time looking and qualifying and waiting for the decent HITs instead of acting like horny jackrabbits anytime a "too good to be true" HIT comes along, you might see things a little differently. I said some, not all -- but if you think I'm talking about you, I probably am.
Yes, we feel passionate about protecting workers. It makes sense for us to care, coordinate, etc. We are workers. Why a worker would put so much effort into defending the scammers and advocating against their punishment/removal/etc is a bit of a mystery to me, though. ETA: I should add that although I never get scammed (I have 11 rejections and a 99.9% approval rate), the scammer requesters hurt all of our paychecks. How many good new requesters come and go because experienced workers are afraid of working for a new, untested requester? How much more work could we do if we weren't all scared shitless of being scammed and having no recourse?
Now this is good shit. I'm not even gonna start with the I told you so's, but weren't you one of the people who jumped down my throat about saying something hurts all Turkers? If I gave a shit I'd look for the posts, but that would take an effort I'm not willing to make atm. Why don't you guys do something about all the credit report HITs? And Medallia? And all the other mass rejecters? Hey make sure you start a lawsuit against Oscar Smith for slave wages. I mean, this is America! We have a minimum wage rule don't we? Let's get rid of all the requesters that violate that law too. Might as well start one against CrowdFlower. The more requesters you complain about, the more work for me (until Amazon gets tired of the whining and requesters leaving and shuts mTurk down completely, that is). As for "new requesters coming and going" uh.. BS. All they have to do is communicate and raise pay and their work will get done. Requesters don't run off because the work doesn't get done right away, they run off when it doesn't get done right. Amazon makes it too easy for them -- haven't you noticed? There is always someone willing to do the work, experienced or not. AND: the person who started this thread had his doubts even before doing the HITs. He posted it here. Obviously, the work will be done whether someone is scared shitless or not.
Actually, no. IIRC, I jumped down your throat for trying to sabotage this forum and accuse a regular worker of being a scammer with zero evidence. I talked to honest requesters a while back (who eventually found TN) who said the scam requesters hurt them, because workers were scared to do their HITs. The Op only did a few hits to test the waters this time, and the scam requester in question is the biggest requester on mturk at the moment. http://mturk-tracker.com/top_requesters/0/ Does Amazon profiteer off of these stolen wages?
That too. But I recall something along the lines of "my" paycheck and how nobody else affects it. Pics or it didn't happen. I thought he was talking about crowdserver (cloudserver? idk whatev) ? I don't see them on there. Idfk sweetcheeks. I'm tired and trying to hit my $40 mark tethered to my cell phone. I'll try to find out so I can argue more in the morning.
Booty, this is not an attack on my part against you, OK? But if someone doesn't think they want to be involved or concerned by some issue, whatever it is, they do have the choice to ignore it. Athena: I think it is worth finding out if Amazon profits from illegal hits and unpaid wages. It would be transparent of them to clarify what their policy and practice is on this. If they can cancel and confiscate any wages in the account of a banned worker, I would sincerely hope that they do the same thing for errant requesters. And that is the kind of question that they should answer in public. It's not only transparency, it's good business practice.
idk if you're still going to be tethered today, but the key is to not clear your cookies and to introduce graphics slowly (don't open 15 new tabs/windows at once)
Nope. An argument like that doesn't fit within my working hypothesis on How Shit Works in Life or on Mturk. I would never go to bat for an idea that I didn't even believe in. Same scamster trying out a different user-name, as I understand it.