[tomjen3]

First of all, the payment is about seven dollar according to the article that is slightly above minimum wage. It may be below some states wage but it is clearly close.

What mechanical turk does allow companies (and individuals) to do however is to hire people for a very short term (a few seconds) for, literally, pennies.

And assuming that enough work was available we should expect the rate to increase since there will be less spam bots.

And at any rate it is better than the alternative of make work.

[greyish_water]

the payment is about seven dollar according to the article

This is unrealistic in practice. The Simple Dollar article cited describes making >$7 in an hour, but $6.55 of that comes from writing an article on email autoresponder marketing and writing a review of an unspecified service. Those aren't the kind of tasks that anybody can accomplish in a timely and competent manner, nor is the supply of those tasks reliable.

[shingen]

Federal minimum wage is $7.25 / hour. So it's slightly below minimum wage.