| Love your passion social justice. I share it, and I can understand how a cursory understanding of mTurk may feel exploitative. That said, it's clear neither the NYT nor the Daily Beast understand MTurk users - and because of that, they mistake a hobby for a job. For many people in the US, MTurk isn't about making money, it's about doing something while you're bored. It's not a replacement for a job, it's a replacement for Farmville. "Ever wonder what our labor market would look like without minimum wages or labor law protections?" If Turkers were paid with a virtual currency, there would be no comparison to minimum wages - but because they're paid with cash, the puzzles/work exists in a weird world between work and play. Also worth mentioning, I intentionally price my HITs low so as to target turkers who aren't looking to supplement their income. It only takes 5 minutes of trying to find one person's email address to realize $.03 isn't worth it - if your goal is to make money. I may be still missing the boat, but if Turkers really are doing this as a hobby - is it still exploitative? |
Doing some turking to buy extra things while someone else pays your bills isn't exploitive in my opinion. But, for the 18% who are using is to make ends meet I do think it has a very real possibility to be exploitive. That's where regulation could help, in ensuring for those people who really need it have the safeguards in place to prevent the exploitation. I am far from an expert on Mechanical turk, and if it could guarantee that minimum wage was being met then I would not be against it.