Controversial HITs

[hyway]

BTW, I apologize for the drama. I am on an extended lunch break from doing taxes and I don't want to return to that drudgery

 

[kryss]

You can discuss them in this thread while being respectful. Diverse opinions are encouraged along with contributing to the conversation in a positive manner.

 

[Jaded]

Any time ANYONE has directly contacted the requester account, the reply has always been one of confusion.

I'm a little confused on this one. I've never contacted them, but has anyone posted the actual emails that (if I'm reading this right) many people have gotten? I've only ever seen one person mention these emails (for these hits, not the Vietnam scams that popped up at the same time.) And no one has ever posted anything that actually shows this.

I don't do the hits they are crap pay if you do them the way you are supposed to. (and if one doesn't do them they way they are supposed to that's kind of poopy)

 

[KittyRaces]

I'm a little confused on this one. I've never contacted them, but has anyone posted the actual emails that (if I'm reading this right) many people have gotten? I've only ever seen one person mention these emails (for these hits, not the Vietnam scams that popped up at the same time.) And no one has ever posted anything that actually shows this.

I don't do the hits they are crap pay if you do them the way you are supposed to. (and if one doesn't do them they way they are supposed to that's kind of poopy)

That part may be my mistake. I could have sworn someone had contacted one of these scam requesters as well, but I'm possibly confusing the two. However, I stand by the rest of what I said. I don't agree with TOS-violating HITs being posted here. I feel it reflects poorly on the forum to requesters who may visit. I don't really care that people do them, but, at this point, you can find them quite easily because the HIT names themselves only rotate through maybe five different options.

 

[TSolo315]

(I think it mostly bothers me because we know that requesters frequently read these threads, and it makes me feel icky that they're seeing people revel in doing these.)

I don't agree with TOS-violating HITs being posted here. I feel it reflects poorly on the forum to requesters who may visit.

I don't think anyone would care, outside of them being referred to as "scammies" as aveline pointed out, I don't think requesters would even notice. Most requesters are here to recruit for their HITs, not to find HITs themselves. The constant gifs are probably a much bigger turn off.

 

[essjay]

I don't think anyone would care, outside of them being referred to as "scammies" as aveline pointed out, I don't think requesters would even notice. Most requesters are here to recruit for their HITs, not to find HITs themselves. The constant gifs are probably a much bigger turn off.

I wasn't implying that they were looking for HITs to work on? I'm saying that by continuing to allow people to post them and talk about them like this, it makes us all look bad. Similar to the "no posting about working while on intoxicants" guideline.

 

[TSolo315]

I wasn't implying that they were looking for HITs to work on? I'm saying that by continuing to allow people to post them and talk about them like this, it makes us all look bad. Similar to the "no posting about working while on intoxicants" guideline.

My point was that because they are not looking for HITs, they have no reason to scan every export, or get a bad impression from a HIT being posted here. 99% wouldn't understand why anyone would be excited over any given HIT posted -- or the contents of those HITs.

I do agree that if someone came out and said "you guys are scamming google," or something, that would leave a bad impression, but I haven't seen much of that?

Unrelated, but I agree with the above sentiment that for the most part it's not the workers job to decide if a HIT does not follow Amazon's terms of service -- that's Amazon's job.

 

[essjay]

My point was that because they are not looking for HITs, they have no reason to scan every export, or get a bad impression from a HIT being posted here. 99% wouldn't understand why anyone would be excited over any given HIT posted -- or the contents of those HITs.

I do agree that if someone came out and said "you guys are scamming google," or something, that would leave a bad impression, but I haven't seen much of that?

Unrelated, but I agree with the above sentiment that for the most part it's not the workers job to decide if a HIT does not follow Amazon's terms of service -- that's Amazon's job.

All right, fair enough. But when they're outright called "scammies" (which they are. repeatedly. every day.), is it so impossible to see how that might leave a poor impression? I am not here to police what HITs people work on, but I do care that the way they're discussed makes me look bad by association.

 

[TSolo315]

All right, fair enough. But when they're outright called "scammies" (which they are. repeatedly. every day.), is it so impossible to see how that might leave a poor impression?

Right, which is why I mentioned that in my first post

I agree that people should stop calling them that. Just posting an export is fine (and more efficient because they use a million different names so a nickname is less than helpful to anyone.)

 

[Cara]

I'm a little confused on this one. I've never contacted them, but has anyone posted the actual emails that (if I'm reading this right) many people have gotten? I've only ever seen one person mention these emails (for these hits, not the Vietnam scams that popped up at the same time.) And no one has ever posted anything that actually shows this.

I don't do the hits they are crap pay if you do them the way you are supposed to. (and if one doesn't do them they way they are supposed to that's kind of poopy)

i contacted one of the requesters, and i received an email from someone saying they had no idea what mturk was.

 

[Jaded]

i contacted one of the requesters, and i received an email from someone saying they had no idea what mturk was.

Interesting, I have some things to throw out there that I've gone through each time this argument has come up.

Requesters get a lot of emails for posting hits. Pre-purchasing hits, a daily report, plus the 2 or 3 registration emails. How would the Fakers (for lack of a better name) manage to make it through registration with the fake emails. Secondary to that, why? If they are going to scam someone, wouldn't they use their own emails? So there wouldn't be any notification to the person they are scamming, and no way for them to fix it really quickly? Also, why would they respond to a worker if they ignored all the other emails? (I'm assuming in this situation they would have had to ignore the others because they would have found out pretty quick what mturk was by googling it when they started seeing weird charges, and getting emails about buying things.)

That leads me to three conclusions and I'm only going to share two cause the other sounds nasty and accusatory.
1. They lied
Reason they may have lied: Breaking multiple ToS's (Turks and the Ad services) and want plausible deniability in case someone calls them on their nonsense they can say "Nope, I was totally scammed. I don't know what any of this is."
2. They are dense and confused by the mturk and don't know that mturk = mechanical turk.


I do want to say I think the hits are terrible either way. They are breaking Requester ToS, and they are breaking whatever Ad service ToS, so they are not hits that I'll do. However they are okay, strictly speaking, according to the worker ToS, and we're here for the workers, not to police the requesters. They should not be called Scammies, that's a terrible name and does make us look bad. But there is only so much we can do on that part, if others won't quit calling them that.

 

[Cara]

http://prntscr.com/al72oo

 

[essjay]

screenshot

Might wanna scribble out his email, too.

 

[Jaded]

http://prntscr.com/al72oo

Thanks for posting that. I take back any implied accusation but on the whole the rest of that post still stands. There are a lot of things that we are still speculating about, and we can't really pick and choose which TOS breakers we allow/disallow. I don't endorse the hits at all but I don't think it's fair to bar them based on them breaking the requester ToS.

 

[KittyRaces]

I do want to add that it is entirely possible to hack someone's email account, not change their password and, if they really aren't paying attention, have them be none the wiser. Obviously I have no idea if that's the case here, but it IS absolutely possible.

 

[Lepi]

...Yall motherfuckers get up to a lot of shit while I'm not looking, I don't know why I keep leaving you to your own devices.

Anyway. I honestly don't know that much about these HITs. If the only issue with them is a TOS violation, fine. There are a lot of HITs that violate TOS and people love them... I think the Pinterest HITs are TOS violations, aren't they? Since they require a Pinterest account, which falls under that "Requiring registration to outside websites" thing. The old Kenta hits were TOS violations. Any hit that has penises in it but doesn't include the adult content warning is a TOS violation.

However... if there's reason to believe that they're being funded with stolen credit cards, or that the account has been hacked... that's an issue of legality, not Amazon or MTC rules. That's an actual crime. It seems like it would be wise for the forum to distance itself from potential illegal activity.

At this point I'm not sure how strongly it's believed or evidenced that something illegal is going on here, but that would be my primary concern. Not because I expect the cops to show up on my door step, but just in the same vein that we don't allow people to post torrenting sites.

 

[essjay]

I think the Pinterest HITs are TOS violations, aren't they? Since they require a Pinterest account, which falls under that "Requiring registration to outside websites" thing.

I think you can actually do them without an account, though (not saying you SHOULD, but that it doesn't seem to require you to log in). I have an account that I have never used, but it's set up through my twitter account and the account linking thing stopped working for me, like, two years ago, but I've never had a problem doing them.

 

[Lepi]

I think you can actually do them without an account, though (not saying you SHOULD, but that it doesn't seem to require you to log in). I have an account that I have never used, but it's set up through my twitter account and the account linking thing stopped working for me, like, two years ago, but I've never had a problem doing them.

See this is out how out of touch I am, I think I've done 1 pinterest...ever..

But I know that there have been a lot of HITs that, while they violated TOS, people were still fine with doing. People will give out their email address for enough money. People trip over themselves to do TOS stuff, as long is the pay is good and it's not the few specific parts of the TOS that everyone seems to dislike. Fake reviews are almost universally disliked, buying votes seems like a 50/50 split, but HITs that ask for your email don't really seem to bother people. Prior to Mturk adjusting their TOS, all the hits that used Inquisit were actual TOS violations, and people didn't care (at least not about the TOS part, they cared because Inquisit is annoying).

So at this point, I understand if "TOS violation" isn't a reason to stop HITs from being posted. There are so many things that are technically TOS violations that most people over look, and it would be hard to police all of them. I will personally do things that violate the TOS if I don't take some issue with it. Like my email address, or a picture of myself, these things don't bother me.

 

[kryss]

We've been looking into it and have an email into amazon and we're awaiting a response. At this point we've made no decision.

 

[Lepi]

20 bucks says Amazon tells you that the best way to handle scam requesters is to clear your cache.