11/14 - Thoroughbred Thursday

Did you get a Amazon bot warning email?


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themildone

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So its not just me? I havent seen a HIT in the past 25 minutes. Some weird fuckery going on with the site today or requesters just sleeping in late?
it's been pretty slow for me today. One hit every 30 minutes or so. Now if I'm actually able to do that hit is a different story :(
 

klingeemonster

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So its not just me? I havent seen a HIT in the past 25 minutes. Some weird fuckery going on with the site today or requesters just sleeping in late?
Doesn't really make requesters feel good when they hear about a bunch of workers getting messages that they're using Bots. It would really help if you would make sure that's actually going on before you start sending out crap like that.
 
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ChrisTurk

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I've said this elsewhere, and just to be clear I don't have any sort of contacts at Amazon or anything it's just my personal observations and I'm not taking sides/judging/whatever, but I think these emails are a lot more high level than just any X/Y batch. MTurk has everyone's entire work history from day one, it's not like they cannot look into things with some fairly simple queries and pull accounts with X # blocks / % above avg submission on Z batch / etc to start identifying accounts that might be sources of data quality that might be undesirable to requesters. People have a really hard time disassociating their work effort with their work product and we all know on MTurk we don't really get paid for effort.

From what little we get to see they've divulged reaching out for datasets specifically looking for low quality work & the VPN'd up accounts. This one was posted this week:



So even being cheeky and thinking putting "VERY NICE" into the comment box on a survey is funny (something I've seen more than a few workers mention doing) might come back to bite you 6 months later. Could be anything similar from work history. There is a requester resource that specifically looks for some stupid things & associates a quality scored based on it & no one will know if/when the dataset is shared w/ MTurk and/or how they process it (if at all).

Maybe some emails are errors, maybe not, but it's a good opportunity to remember that a lot of things that are just a byproduct of being a human worker can be really damning when tossed into an algorithm that sorts us all based on input we don't get a say in.
 

Minx2121

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my feet are going to be perpetually cold for the foreseeable future. I'm wearing fuzzy red panda socks and fuzzy slippers but they're still icy
Thicker socks :p Fuzzy just makes them comfy haha
 
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masterx1234

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Doesn't really make requesters feel good when they hear about a bunch of workers getting messages that they're using Bots. It would really help if you would make sure that's actually going on before you start sending out crap like that.
But using macros and voice typing software isnt something that would warrant any worries from a requester because I am still 100% using my human intelligence. The macros are mostly for MLD HIT's that I can just tap the 1 or 2 key and it will select the first or second option and then click submit in a split second instead of me having to move the mouse from one selection to the other. BTW this is the most basic autohotkey scripting. Anyone can do this,
 
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klingeemonster

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But using macros and voice typing software isnt something that would warrant any worries from a requester because I am still 100% using my human intelligence. The macros are mostly for MLD HIT's that I can just tap the 1 or 2 key and it will select the first or second option and then click submit in a split second instead of me having to move the mouse from one selection to the other. BTW this is the most basic autohotkey scripting. Anyone can do this,
Yeah even I could make one of those and my scripting ability is s***. I've been doing surveys for one platform or another for the last decade and I have yet to find in that entire time this mysterious bot that fills out surveys for you and could not be spotted right away.
 
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keljenner

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I was really hoping it would be cleared up by tomorrow so I could pay some bills with it. My emergency fund went bye bye after my job loss/health crisis and my budget is tight right now until I get caught up. That's why I'm here. To make money in a timely manner. Not have them pay whenever it suits them. :(
The lack of communication is a bigger let down than the tech issue for me. I just hear they are working on it. Are the tech guys using wrenches and unable to communicate online? Just send an email to us at least and say there is an issue and we are hopefully gonna fix it by X date.
 

MirrorMan

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I've said this elsewhere, and just to be clear I don't have any sort of contacts at Amazon or anything it's just my personal observations and I'm not taking sides/judging/whatever, but I think these emails are a lot more high level than just any X/Y batch. MTurk has everyone's entire work history from day one, it's not like they cannot look into things with some fairly simple queries and pull accounts with X # blocks / % above avg submission on Z batch / etc to start identifying accounts that might be sources of data quality that might be undesirable to requesters. People have a really hard time disassociating their work effort with their work product and we all know on MTurk we don't really get paid for effort.

From what little we get to see they've divulged reaching out for datasets specifically looking for low quality work & the VPN'd up accounts. This one was posted this week:



So even being cheeky and thinking putting "VERY NICE" into the comment box on a survey is funny (something I've seen more than a few workers mention doing) might come back to bite you 6 months later. Could be anything similar from work history. There is a requester resource that specifically looks for some stupid things & associates a quality scored based on it & no one will know if/when the dataset is shared w/ MTurk and/or how they process it (if at all).

Maybe some emails are errors, maybe not, but it's a good opportunity to remember that a lot of things that are just a byproduct of being a human worker can be really damning when tossed into an algorithm that sorts us all based on input we don't get a say in.
Well, so much for me telling requesters to "have a nice day" in the comment box.
 

C to the J

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Okay Mturk you had your chance, I'm going to go out and chop some wood. At least I can stay warm while I'm broke, because being broke and cold would really suck.
I wanna chop wood now too
I want the three of us to do some manly shit together like shoot shit and talk about cars.
 

MinkyMona

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I'm so afraid I'm going to lose my account I'm having an anxiety attack. I don't use scripts beyond turkmaster and the mts extension. Wtf did I do wrong to get this scary ass email?
 

TmicheleCK

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My "pending" withdrawal is only $110 but I am royally screwed now. That was gas money for the week so I can get to my job. This is making me rethink this whole TURKing, I have only doing this since early June and between the August debacle and now this I may just give it up. The extra money is nice, but a huge company like Amazon doing business like this astounds me.
 
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