08/30 - Fixing Friday

We (Turkopticon) tweeted calling out AWS security asking if workers should be concerned about their private data, but I think I'm going to go harder on that front, because honestly, it's starting to feel like this is another data breach.

 

That is possible, just last month there was a major hack (I don't remember who right now) but all the private data was uploaded to the dark web. It's a thought.

 

ConnectResearch wants me to confirm my identity by September 9th.. That means I have to provide my driver's license and a selfie. I'm not sure I want to give them that kind of information when there have been so many data breaches on so many different platforms. Thoughts??

 

It's a tricky situation, all these data breeches, but if we want to do what we want to do, we seem to have to give up some of our protections. I'm expecting to have to do that soon myself. I probably will, but waiting until I MUST do it, and even then, still thinking about it.

 

Was that in an email? B/c I'm registered there and didn't get one. I haven't logged in there this week though.

 

I think it should be fine. I just had to do the same for Prolific.

 

Yeah they sent me an email... and when I checked it said for my account to be in good standing I have to provide said information my September 9th.

 

If you're seriously intending to continue work with CloudResaerch, you don't really have a choice. Otherwise, it's an eh kind of position. On one hand, they are using a third party software to do it. On the other hand..... they are using a third party company to do it. As JMD said, Prolific requires it (but they required it upfront). I do know that CloudResearch is apparently waitlisting people who refuse to do it.. but they waitlist people randomly anyway.

It's there when you log in, you can't miss it.

 

At this point, a requester who makes frequent use of the platform and expends a lot of money discovers a contact at Amazon (who is further up the chain of command than that of Mturk's general tech support) may have a bit more sway in receiving updates or a quicker explanation as to what's taking place. Often, a business will care most and act quicker to find a resolution when their big-ticket spender complains, but sometimes it requires complaining to those beyond the support team, which is why it may be important to find a contact other than just the general support team.

 

I wish I could just make a mturk that the requesters could switch to. the other sites are really asking for a lot and giving little to nothing in the way of batches.

 

Title: Engaging Math problem solving with AI tutor [V3 Pilot study #1, with turn-level vote] | PANDA
Requester: Dialogue Evaluation [A3U6H3MXL6ZM9B]
TurkerView: [ $5.70 / hour ]
Description: Pick math problems that you are interested in, and chat with AI tutor to learn to solve it. Perfect for those who want to test and enhance their math skills with the help of cutting-edge technology. Bonus will be awarded for high-quality work.
Duration: 60 Min
Available: 21
Reward: $5.00
Qualifications:

• mt-b DoesNotExist
• Location In AU, GB, US,
• Masters Exists
• Total approved HITs GreaterThanOrEqualTo 1000,
• HIT approval rate (%) GreaterThanOrEqualTo 98,
• math_tutoring_good DoesNotExist

[3SKITTYV07B5X77LSTCCW11911L63S]​

 

does anyone know if we can do more than 1 of these? I'm not learning all the necessary things for one hit.

 

so based on this since 2019 our payments have not been coming through Amazon payments.

This makes me wonder if they were maybe trying to purge old unused accounts, I for one never used my amazon payments account for anything else. Of course this would mess up mturk but we have already establish there is little to no communication between different departments

 

I think they were trying to hijack our pay. If they changed all these accounts to deposit somewhere else, that would be a neat trick. Whatever the reason, I do believe these accounts were compromised.

 

Apparently Amazon Payments told this person to simply sign up a new account (I think I remember another Reddit thread or comment where another worker was suggested the same by either Payments or MTurk)

 

Take a look at the Qual list. Last one is this:

math_tutoring_good DoesNotExist

That is a type of qual usually to prevent retakes. These are typically assigned immediately after you submit a HIT, to prevent you from doing it again.

 

I don't think these Amazon Payments people know anything about MTurk. Who would want to give up their turk history and quals to start at the bottom? Not to mention, it's against ToS.

 

I saw a post like that on Reddit too.

 

I tried to figure out where some batch requesters went. so we can go wherever they went. I'm finding websites that are confusing. like, twitter used to post a lot on mturk. now they go through these places -
https://blog.x.com/engineering/en_us/topics/infrastructure/2022/data-quality-automation-at-twitter
https://greatexpectations.io/
https://airflow.apache.org/community/

maybe some of the batches we used to do didn't go to a different platform where other workers are doing them. maybe they switched to being done by software.

 

Someone else reported that they were given that advice from mturk so they went ahead and created a new account, and it was banned during the verification process.