[droithomme]

If someone's life is so desperate that doing this is worth the time investment, I can't begrudge them it. Likewise with those poor souls who survive and are thankful to eat rotting refuse from dumpsters. Perhaps the income will help them lift themselves up to the point they can pursue a more satisfying life.

[newguy1234]

I used to do phone farming. You don't understand how it works. After you setup your farming rig, all you had to do was put about 1 hour per day of maintenance into it, often times even less than that...and you would earn $1,000-$2,000 per month from it in gift cards.

All of the apps were passive, it just would loop over and over playing ads.

[Scoundreller]

Curious about what maintenance was required: looking for new programs? Installing new programs? Actual interaction with phones? Culling broken devices?

[dylz]

Restarting crashed apps (ads can load their own awful code), tapping periodic "are you still watching", swapping between apps during certain hours for more revenue

[newguy1234]

Basically, every day you reset any phones that were frozen. That would take 15 mins or so. Every now and then you would have to swap out a phone that was boot looping. Every now and then update the app. I would say 20-30 hours per month maybe?

[cestith]

I'm sure some of them do it for the sake of curiosity and of working the system in interesting ways. It's much like the folks doing minor phone phreaking back in the day just to see it work for themselves.

[panzagl]

You do realize this site is called HackerNews, right?