Mechanical Turk

Description

Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is a crowdsourcing, microtask website run by Amazon. You can earn money by completing various simple tasks, often referred to as Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs), that require human judgment or skills that computers still struggle with. These might include describing, tagging, or classifying objects in images and videos, data verification and cleanup, finding and removing duplicates, standardising unstructured data and a whole lot more.

We are including this platform tentatively as it has some very poor reviews, and clearly some of the positive reviews are fake (different names, same review). We are also aware of issues on the platform which we have highlighted below. We are awaiting further information and screenshots.

Pay

In the US, workers are paid by direct deposit to their bank account. Workers in 25 countries outside of the US can create a virtual US bank account through a 3rd party payee service provider of their choice, with Hyperwallet being one of the options.

Reviews

MTurk has a low rating of just 2.2/5 on Trustpilot. Some reviewers mention scams on the platform, with a common theme of requesters rejecting your work so they get work done for free. Some suggest using the platform alongside Turkopticon which advocates for MTurk workers, known as Turkers, and their rights, including highlighting problem requesters who do things like mass reject tasks.

Availability

With the introduction of payments via a virtual US bank account, MTurk is a viable option in many more countries. aside from the United States. Hyperwallet added Australia, Austria, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, Poland, Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

How to join

Use the link here: https://www.mturk.com/worker