[gojomo]

1099s are only required if more than $600 is paid in a year.

You are a "contractor" if you are providing services under a contract. A contract exists whenever there is a definitive agreement to exchange valuable considerations – even in the absence of a written, signed contract.

But the sign-up for these apps might have included an explicit "signing" phase! (It's even possible that FB/Google asked for participants' SSNs, just in case any payments went over $600.)

[josho]

Apply some common sense here. A contractor charges money for their time. $20/mth is what I’ve read they were paid. That means anything more than 2 hours of work is breaking minimum wage laws.

[gojomo]

And it could easily be less than 2 hours of effort per month to install/update the app and answer occasional questionnaires. But even if, outlandishly, a minimum wage violation, if they’re being paid under a contract, they’re ‘contractors’.

(And if they’re under any sort of confidentiality agreement or other conditions on their app usage, they fit under the Apple terms’ concepts of “Permitted Users” and “Internal Use” even better.)

[eganist]

They're selling rights to data. They're not producing work or materials for hire. Anywhere I or anyone else has made this point you haven't responded.

[eganist]

They're not even doing work for hire. They're selling rights to data, likely non-exclusive.