Dawn of the Digital Sweatshop in East Bay Express; article about labor issues

Discussion in 'General' started by differenceengines, Aug 2, 2012.

  1. differenceengines

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  2. bootybitch

    bootybitch Banned

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    Thank you for this! Dammit, a Turker's Bill of Rights would be fantastic.

    I had to LOL at that. We ask, we complain, we blacklist - we still get screwed.
     
  3. Khalinov

    Khalinov User

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    I started Turking in 2008. “Dawn of the Digital Sweatshop” indeed.
     
  4. watari

    watari User

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    There are definitely labor challenges in this kind of "work" and I think you could turn this into a more sustainable business but Amazon would never have organized labor of any kind.
     
  5. differenceengines

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    I think one of the difficulties of journalists, activists, and policy makers who do care about this stuff is that AMT (and crowdwork more generally) makes workers invisible except on places like this forum. Journalists will come to the forums to find workers to talk to but maybe they won't get anyone to volunteer on a short deadline, or maybe they need people in their geographical area to make it make sense for their local newspaper or lawmakers and the forums make it hard to reach people in that basis.

    I was kicking around the idea of something like a Turkers Media Bureau -- a free, lightweight service for Turk workers who want to be available to talk to the press or policy people. People could list their geographical area, some basic demographics, how long they've been turking, how much time they spend on average, and they get listed anonymously like on Craigslist, anonymized address and all. That would make it easier for Turkers to become visible in public conversations about this stuff. Just an idea though.

    What do you all think of such a thing? What concerns would you have?
     
  6. nobody

    nobody User

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    Thanks for posting this. I made it about halfway through, and it's good. I'll read the rest later.

    One thing I will mention is that without worker solidarity, things will not improve on mturk or anywhere else. Look at the major protests by workers in Greece, and then look here in the US. Divided we fall, united we stand. American workers get screwed over because we never stick together. That can have a domino effect on international workers.

    Anyway, thank you for Turkopticon, it is awesome!

    ETA: Just saw your post before mine, and my only concern would be privacy. A reporter posted here a few weeks ago, and I had no way of knowing if it was a scammer. I don't know how many people even responded.

    A media bureau would be great if we could remain anonymous, then give out our info to a reporter if we chose.
     
    #6 nobody, Aug 2, 2012
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 2, 2012
  7. Whimsy

    Whimsy User

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    As with TO, my concern would be in terms of truthfulness.

    I don't trust the loudest voices to be the ones representing the whole. I believe people will make things up just to put others down, to make themselves feel important. I know I am making less than minimum wage, but I'm also learning a skill. As my skills improve, my income will improve. Not every task on AMT is batch-HIT type.

    As for batch HITs: There's a member here who has made, in the last few months, as much as someone working 40 hours a week for minimum wage (essentially, hard to figure tax stuff out). He finds good stuff and goes for it.

    But back to concerns - I don't trust people on the internet to be entirely truthful. And what they may believe to be the truth, won't hold water in someone else's situation.
     
  8. bootybitch

    bootybitch Banned

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    See, I have a hard time discerning my "hourly wage." When I'm actually working, I make more than minimum wage for the most part. (Yes, there are days that are the exception.) But, sometimes I spend so much time at the computer, mostly looking for HITs. I feel like that should be included in my "work time" because it's certainly not leisure time.

    So, do I only count the time I'm working? That could be less than an hour a day even though I sit on my ass in front of the screen all day.

    But if I count in the hours spent trolling available HITs... well, color me sweatshop. Hell, I'd probably have better luck recycling the zillions of soda cans my kids go through.
     
  9. differenceengines

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    That's helpful, about fearing that the reporters are scammers. I hadn't thought of that as a barrier. Other potential barriers or dangers people can think of?

    I get Whimsy's fear about the dangers of the loudest speaking for the whole. However, it seems to me that even if workers (or whoever) don't stick together, the loudest still gets the privileges or sometimes speaks for others. United we argue about the right path forward, but divided some loud person will snuggle up to the power structure and speak for everyone anyways?

    With Turk, the prospect of standing together temporarily seems really difficult right now since workers are distributed in different places and countries. Turkopticon is one attempt to chip away at that disunity by bringing people together on the common cause of avoiding scammy requesters. This forum also chips away at that disunity. A media bureau maybe would allow more workers to represent themselves in the public debates. Each of these things just brings workers together in slightly different ways targeted at slightly different goals.

    I don't know what the answers are but I'm glad we're starting the debate.
     
  10. chuck_h

    chuck_h User

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    Lukas Biewald is an Ass

    I have several things that I'd like to comment on from this article, but the one that immediately springs to mind is the quote from Lukas Biewald.

    "I find it interesting that the people who complain" — meaning, mostly, academics, activists, and tech-industry observers — "are not the workers," Biewald said. "And the workers would actually be pretty pissed off if the people complaining were successful."

    What an arrogant ass. The reason you're not hearing many complaints, is because you choose not to listen to them or seek them out. Willful blindness is not an excuse.

    Many of the workers you exploit for the profits of your company, CrowdFlower, come from cultures where complaining about their employers is a sure trip to unemployment. It's also entirely possible that if someone was an exceptionally squeaky wheel they'd likely find themselves unable to work for your company any more, and this would be quite crippling to someone already scrambling to find enough work to try to make a living, considering that CrowdFlower is the largest single requester on MTurk.

    If you were to read the messages on this forum for example, you'd see there are a number of people who won't work your HITs because you demand large volumes of work for miserly reward. I imagine there are a larger number of people who do do them, because they don't really have much of a choice.

    Additionally, if the "people who complain" were able to shake a few more shekels out of your company for those of us who actually do the work, I don't think a single one of us would be pissed off.

    However, that'd mean less money for you, and I imagine that a company with 49 employees needs every cent it can scrape together, especially considering that the suckers who forked over $12 million plus in initial and round A and B funding for your fine company are probably kind of wondering when they're going to start seeing a return on their investment.

    Wow, I was a lot angrier about what Lukas Biewald said than I thought I was!;)
     
  11. iceblink

    iceblink User

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    I'd be in favour of anything that swings a little bit of power away from the requester and back to the worker.. Workers don't really seem to have a voice at all on MTurk..

    What worries me the most is the 2 blocks i've acquired over my 3 months, pretty sure one more and i'm dead and gone from the site.. Meaning I live in constant fear every single day I log on, even though I work at a 99.9% accuracy ratio with 14,000 HITs approved and 18 rejected in the last 45 days :( The 2 requesters that blocked me were ProductRnR and some mysterious one called "B.M" who i completed 2 HITs for.. :S

    If I did lose my Turk account it's fair to say it'd have a huge impact on my life, potentially devastating.. The earnings I get on here keep the pendulum between incomings and outgoings swinging in "just" the right direction.. For that to happen to me because of requesters like the ones above is just wrong. Especially as there's little to no appeals process when it happens, my life gets torn up and I get a standard cut and paste email from Amazon to show for it. I'd join the list of thousands of honest workers that this has already happened to :( I don't really think this is a fair work condition for anybody to have to suffer through, the fear it generates is huge.

    All i'd like is to have a voice if a requester nonchalantly blocks me, and i'll put up with the whole surfing through 99% of sweatshop work to find the 1% worthwhile stuff.
     

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