Sure its a risky maneuver to shoot like that, but anyone can be risky. I think it was a mistake. Better to have experimented in a test shot. The drama of the camera takes away from what is being said, I don’t see how it adds to it.

I was much more interested in the montage at the beginning and think that that was enough. This reminded me of watching those old Stuart Hall lectures with the crazy ‘cool’ backgrounds of the early 1990s.

Either way it was a pleasure to listen and good to hear more about digital labour.

The reasons why market rates are so low, however, are complicated. Indeed, there are more tasks available on the service than workers ready to do them — so if anything, its a market that is tilted toward labor. What seems to be the problem is that mTurk’s reputational infrastructure doesn’t allow workers to distinguish themselves in any meaningful way. How much would you pay a worker who hasn’t been vetted, interviewed, and may have no previous experience in the subject? the answer: not very much, and while many companies (like mine) tries to pay good workers more, Amazon does not make this easy. This is a classic market for lemons, where high quality products (e.g. workers willing to do great work for you) are indistinguishable for low quality products (e.g. workers who give you answers quickly, but are usually incorrect).

Its worth nothing that most workers are only doing 100 or so tasks in a given week, for a grand total of 4-5 hours of total work a week. From what we can tell, very few people are using mTurk as a primary source of income, but are instead using it as a way to supplement their income, spend free time, or even use it out of boredom. The prototypical mTurk worker is either a) an American middle-aged woman who uses the service in her free time or b) a young indian man who uses it to supplement his income. Neither group is making more than $10-$20/week on the service, and about 70% of both groups report being employed elsewhere.

For more, I suggest you check NYU professor Panos Ipeirotis’ blog on the subject: http://behind-the-enemy-lines.blogspot.com/ .

Oh, and sorry for the anonymous post — I would post under my name, but I currently work at a company that uses mTurk. obviously my opinions are my own, and not my employer’s.

As for the mechanical turk, my suspicion based on the (unbidden) testimony I’ve heard is that it’s more or less only as exploitative as the underlying economic conditions allow. The job market is shitty, it’s harder and takes longer to find work –mTurk lets you continue contributing a few bucks to the household income while you’re on a dry streak. So that’s /exploitative/ in a sense, but unless mTurk is responsible in some way for there being no jobs, I’m not certain the friends I know who’ve used it would be better off without it. On the other hand, mTurk obviously wouldn’t have as large a pool of labour to draw on if there were real jobs for people.

So, it’s about as exploitative as dollar stores, probably. 🙂 A symptom, not a disease.