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I think Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MT) is fascinating. I really wish Amazon would release more figures on its usage, rather than only the number of registered us

by runeks 12y ago

I think Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MT) is fascinating. I really wish Amazon would release more figures on its usage, rather than only the number of registered users[1]. It would be really interesting to see how many people earn their wages through this service. The chart in the article says 16% in Feb '10 [2], but I think it would be really interesting to see 1) how much money they earn, 2) how many hours they work, 3) where they live, 4) how much Amazon pays out in total in MT wages (all anonymized data, of course). [1] > The only numbers that we share regarding our Worker population are these two -- which reflect our current state: Over 500K registered Workers from over 190 countries worldwide. https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?threadID=58891 https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?threadID=58891 [2] http://pix-media.s3.amazonaws.com/blog/835/ScreenShot2014-10-14at4.58.57PM.png http://pix-media.s3.amazonaws.com/blog/835/ScreenShot2014-10...

mandalar12 12y ago
Here is an article [1] trying to estimate that kind of numbers (wage, number of active workers, etc.) from various sources and questionning the ethics of using MTurk for science purposes. The bottom line is: one third of tasks are achieved by people relying on MTurk (as primary or secondary money input) having working conditions that would not be considered acceptable in any first-world country (hourly wages around $2, working long hours with, obviously, no kind of worker advantage or protection). [1] https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/file/index/docid/569450/filename/LastWords_AMT.pdf https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/file/index/docid/569450/fil...
- jbarrios 12y ago
  Harvard recently published a paper on the mturk demographics, you can find it here: http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/dtingley/files/whoarethesepeople.pdf http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/dtingley/files/whoarethesep... If you're looking for something less academic, try out this great blog: http://experimentalturk.wordpress.com/ http://experimentalturk.wordpress.com/

by runeks 12y ago

mandalar12 12y ago

Here is an article [1] trying to estimate that kind of numbers (wage, number of active workers, etc.) from various sources and questionning the ethics of using MTurk for science purposes. The bottom line is: one third of tasks are achieved by people relying on MTurk (as primary or secondary money input) having working conditions that would not be considered acceptable in any first-world country (hourly wages around $2, working long hours with, obviously, no kind of worker advantage or protection). [1] https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/file/index/docid/569450/filename/LastWords_AMT.pdf https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/file/index/docid/569450/fil...

jbarrios 12y ago
Harvard recently published a paper on the mturk demographics, you can find it here: http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/dtingley/files/whoarethesepeople.pdf http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/dtingley/files/whoarethesep... If you're looking for something less academic, try out this great blog: http://experimentalturk.wordpress.com/ http://experimentalturk.wordpress.com/