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The 'microworkers' making digital life possible
- xwdv 7y agoWhat are your favorite microworker hacks?
- brosinante 7y agoMy favorite hack is trying to avoid the 2019 equivalent to sweatshop labour.
- gridlockd 7y agoYou seem to disregard that in many countries the alternative to "sweatshop labor" is becoming a beggar. A dollar an hour can be a good income in some parts of this world, believe it or not. If you can't compete on price like that, don't bid.
- seamyb88 7y ago> You seem to disregard that in many countries the alternative to "sweatshop labor" is becoming a beggar. Know who hasn't disregarded this? The wealthy people exploiting it, who pointed it out to you in the hope that this level of depth on the matter was all you needed. Nobody on HN is a participant in a race to the bottom. Don't advocate it as a career strategy.
- scroot 7y agoIt's the neoliberal Panglossian response -- the best of all possible worlds!
- gridlockd 7y agoYou have named your nemesis, but can you show that he's wrong?
- gridlockd 7y ago> Know who hasn't disregarded this? The wealthy people exploiting it, who pointed it out to you in the hope that this level of depth on the matter was all you needed. So? What's the alternative, then? You can complain all day about how people are exploited and that exploitation is bad. I don't disagree on that part. The question is, are you making the situation better by preventing exploitation "per decree"? Let's say you raised the minimum amount of compensation for clickworking, what would happen? All the work that remains economical is compensated better, but all the work that isn't economical at that rate just disappears. What also happens is that no worker gets the opportunity to compete on price. Let's say people from country A are poorer on average and therefore can offer better rates, but the quality is lower on average than in country B. People from country A can still get work by offering lower rates. If rates were forced up, there's no reason to purchase from country B anymore, because price is the same but quality is worse. You have given country B an unfair advantage and you have worsened the economic prospects in country B, even though it is already poorer. This is trade protectionism. If you think it is "good", you can just go shake hands with Donald Trump and praise the China tariffs. > Nobody on HN is a participant in a race to the bottom. A lot of people on HN are on the "Those poor people! We need to regulate this!" bandwagon. Their intention might be right, their comprehension might not. > Don't advocate it as a career strategy. I'm not, that would be ridiculous. Clickworking is not a career. Most people don't have a career. Clickworking might not be a great opportunity for most people, that doesn't mean it should be taken away.
- mighty_bander 7y agoYou're right, taking advantage of desperate people is OK if you give them a slightly better quality of life than homelessness offers.
- moresocialism 7y agoWhen it really comes down to it, it's corrupt governments that create an environment where people are poor and desperate. Mostly because businesses aren't really interested in the risks involved. Nobody cares about fixing this though. They just think throwing money at poor nations will somehow bring people above the poverty line. Many countries in Africa are a good example of this not working. We also perpetuate the issue through massive donations because local industries can't compete with free and the citizens become endlessly dependent.
- gridlockd 7y agoI'm not saying it's "OK" in the moral sense. It's of course morally better to pay people fairly than to exploit their situation, but it's also morally better to exploit their situation than not doing anything for them, or even make their lives worse by removing the opportunity to "get exploited" - for the purpose of moral posturing.
- mighty_bander 7y agoThese companies that we all work at get millions in funding, and are happy to pay programmers 150k+ a year because they need them to succeed. The difference between a dollar and hour and five is negligible to these organisations at the levels most of them are using this sort of labour. This is rarely a choice between paying subsistence wages and none at all - instead it's a choice between subsistence wages and making a decent living. There's also the fact that people who are affected, who slip out the bottom of whatever calculation is going on, are going to have more opportunities locally if their peers are still employed doing more profitable work. I see a lot of people fall for the argument that starvation wages are an alternative to no wages, and it's not true now any more than it was when the industrialists tried it in the 19th century. Standard of living, wherever it may be, is better off when money is in the hands of ordinary working people.
- psychrometer 7y agoGot to love rich westerners who want to remove options that improve that lives of people in the third world.
- depr 7y agoYeah, we're improving lives guys, not maintaining and furthering an unjust system.
- the8472 7y agotry kUbernetes, the replicas and failover make it seamless when any of the podpeople get killed due to resource starvation.
- ackbar03 7y agoI've read somewhere that mturk was never profitable for Amazon. I wonder if this is still the case since there are now a plethora of labeling service companies out there
- zawerf 7y agoI was really surprised at Scale AI's recent 1 billion valuation considering it's also more or less just another labeling service: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20614672 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20614672
- MarkMMullin 7y agoI dunno - having done my own share of labelling, a company to make that horror go away is certainly of value - that said, converting people to cogs in AI systems is worrisome
- jdpigeon 7y agoI was having a hard time deciding which pair of glasses to buy a few years ago, so I posted a survey to mTurk with selfies in a bunch of different frames. About $20 got me ~150 responses and a clear winner. I've been fascinated with the service ever since.
- paggle 7y agoMan, I didn’t realize Venezuela was so fucked that dentists are now doing mTurk.
- vinceguidry 7y agoIt's been like that in Cuba for years. These guys made an actual commercial, for an actual Cuban doctor, who actually sold cars, that ran on actual late night TV, lampooning it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7b5CKSqlz60 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7b5CKSqlz60 Plenty of examples in Cuba of luggage handlers making more money than doctors.
- seamyb88 7y agoEw a luggage handler? What makes them think they can earn money, the horrendous little urchins. Cuba.... Cuba... isn't that the country with the best healthcare system in the world? Don't they send thousands of doctors to the USA on humanitarian missions, because the USA doesn't give healthcare to its people? [1]. Now, you'll laugh at this because of decades of anti-Cuban propaganda (the luggage handlers!), but your anecdote of a Cuban doctor dissatisfied is very cute in the face of what is actually the best healthcare system in the world. Hard to believe that an industry runs better when a handful of individuals aren't a huge, profitting strain on its resources. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_medical_internationalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_medical_internationalism
- johnmulaney 7y agoSending lots of doctors out into the world doesn't mean that they're any good. Working for a good healthcare system doesn't imply good pay. Getting tips in dollars instead of castro monopoly money really helps your salary in Cuba.
- seamyb88 7y agoNo, but being recognised throughout the world for their quality does mean they're "any good". Your last comment tells me who I'm speaking to. Fly your eagle, man. Fly!
- reportgunner 7y agoIsn't it rather the digital life that is making microworkers possible ?
- marmaduke 7y agoI was expecting something about Fiver but this is even more micro. The killer is spending 20 minutes to get 60 minutes of work, so 8$/hr only nets 6$/hr
- soult 7y agoIf you want to catch a glimpse into the lives of some of those workers, kolostories.com[1] "interviews" the workers of their captcha solving microworking site. It's macabre yet fascinating. 1: https://kolostories.com/contents/list https://kolostories.com/contents/list
- ThisNameIsTaken 7y agoWait, is this a real company? What employment agency (sort of) promotes their service by showing how easy it is to ditch their workers and visualises that by shooting them down?! [1] If it is not a parody, macabre doesn't even capture it. [1]: https://anti-captcha.com/ https://anti-captcha.com/
- gridlockd 7y agoSo you are doubting the integrity of a company that circumvents captchas, which are supposed to prevent fraud? > Wait, is this a real company? What employment agency (sort of) promotes their service by showing how easy it is to ditch their workers and visualises that by shooting them down?! The buff guy wearing the mask and cape is supposed to shoot the cheaters, not the honest workers. On the other hand, at your command, he will shoot the second guy who is clearly filling in the correct answers. In other words, if you just want to see the world burn, he will be your willing henchman.
- RonaldSchleifer 7y agoSilicon Valleys' slave labor force that makes the tech plantation work.
- asdfman123 7y ago> Why do the media keep running stories saying suits are back? Because PR firms tell them to. One of the most surprising things I discovered during my brief business career was the existence of the PR industry, lurking like a huge, quiet submarine beneath the news. Of the stories you read in traditional media that aren't about politics, crimes, or disasters, more than half probably come from PR firms. http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
- VBprogrammer 7y agoThis. I worked at a midstage startup for 3 years. Even the major newspapers would print (or at least publish online) your press-releases practically verbatim. They seemed particularly susceptible to anything which contained some dubious statistics.
- gambler 7y agoSo we're automating repetitive physical work and then shove people into repetitive information work that pays peanuts, has no benefits, forces you to work in isolation and spend tons of time sitting in front of the screen. And a lot of this information work goes towards training more systems that will automate away more jobs. And this gets semi-positive coverage from the same press who gladly calls for erasure of individuals from the digital society based on the notion that any "incorrect" opinion can potentially constitute grave societal harm. Hah. Obviously, the solution isn't to delete automation. It is to make AI algorithms into tools directly usable by average individuals. What is happening right now is kind of the other way around.
- Retric 7y agoI had a really mind bending conversation with someone a while ago that actually liked this kind of work. They where supported by their significant other and no job they could take would really change the couples standard of living. It’s competition is daytime soaps not a 9-5 jobs. It’s still flexible and a little extra spending money makes themselves feel better.
- armandososa 7y agoI went into full-time freelancing career as a graphic/web designer in 2007, then came the financial crisis and by mid-2008 I was struggling to feed myself because of the lack of work. So in my desperation I tried mechanical turk. I worked very hard for 8 hours tagging stuff, correcting text and selecting things with boxes. It was horrible, repetitive, mindless grunt work. And I earned like 5 dollars. That was not going to work. So instead I advertised my very limited PHP and JavaScript skills and I started working as a programmer instead of a designer. It turned out there was still a demand for those. I am very thankful that I had some coding knowledge because I don't know what else could I've done. (I also tried 99designs, which paid better while still being dehumanizing, but that's a story for another day)
- PopeDotNinja 7y agoI had a logo made on 99designs last year. I quite liked the experience as a customer; with limited experience in hiring a creator, I got what I wanted. But the process made me a little uncomfortable. Basically the process went like this... - put up description of what I want - declare how much I am willing to pay - have people submit proposals - ask designers I like it iterate on design as needed - pick a winner I wasn't comfortable asking people to do work and have no money change hands if I rejected all the designs, so I committed to selecting a winner so that at least someone got paid. I was OK enough with this part of the process, as it felt a bit like people applying to a job and hiring one of them, and I was doing my best to make the job not crappy. The part that got under my skin was that I got so many submissions. Like 50. I was paying like $400 for what I had originally thought would cost $99 (paid more to attract more submissions, so not sure why I am surprised). It hadn't really registered with me how much work I'd be creating for other people by through this process. In the end, I am OK with the platform as a tool for finding designers I like. I have since hired the designer who won for more work, so in a sense it's a recruiting platform for me. But I can see how many would put in a lot of work and never get paid at all. Kind of like real life :P
- armandososa 7y agoAs a designer I didn't really liked the experience (but things may have changed since 2008). But I had to basically enter as much competitions as possible every day, that meant doing as much as four or five proposals daily. The quality, as one could expect, wasn't as good because a) I spent little to no time refining each idea and b) there was no time to edit myself. Out of the tens of competitions I entered I won two (I won 3k which was very welcome at the time) and both become regular clients outside the platform. I may have getting used to working on 99designs eventually, but I'm just not wired to that staggering amount of rejection and sense of uselessness.