Amazon.com Inc. on Thursday swung to a $274 million third-quarter loss as operating expenses grew. Hope this does not affect the functioning of Mturk. Lately, there have been a lot of suspended accounts and a freeze on new international accounts. Hope all this is not tied to huge operating loss this quarter.
While it might be minimally profitable, it's more likely Mechanical Turk is probably revenue neutral for them or operates at a very small loss, or they would have pulled the plug on it a long time ago. If it was operating at a significant loss, I would imagine it'd be one of the first things on the chopping block.
Apparently a lot of it had to do with opening new warehouses and service centers. The new sales taxes are going to be an issue for them going forward too.
The freeze on international accounts has to do with too much fraud. Plus Amazon is gearing up to hire 40k temp workers for the holiday season so I am sure this number will change
Sorry, but we don't KNOW that for sure. That particular hypothesis has been batted around, but there is no proof from anyone at Amazon that fraud is the reason. It's just a rumor. This was discussed ad nauseam during the summer when it started happening. The world outside the US is a pretty big place and not all of us - nor even an infinitely tiny percentage of us - out here on the other sides of the US borders, are fraudsters.
Amazon continues to cut out items that affiliates can earn a commission on and lowered the rate for some items as well. That'll probably continue to happen before they get rid of mturk.
Mturk is peanuts to the giant elephant Amazon.com. Mturk closes or remains open doesn't affects Amazon. Amazon.com makes millions in a day while all Mturk does is squeak like a little rat on Amazon accounts.