Your Web News in One Place

Help Webnuz

Referal links:

Sign up for GreenGeeks web hosting
December 18, 2016 02:00 pm

Does Amazon's Clickworker Platform Exploit Its Workers?

500,000 people signed up for Amazon's Mechanical Turk, one of several online microjobs platforms that "let companies break jobs into smaller tasks and offer them to people across the globe," reports TechRepublic. But though these workers have trouble communicating directly with Amazon, in any given month about 20,000 of them may be active, "part of an invisible, online workforce -- one that is increasingly in demand for their vital role in helping train intelligent machines." But are these platforms part of a disturbing new trend? Long-time Slashdot reader Paul Fernhout writes:Hope Reese and Nick Heath at TechRepublic ask: "do they democratize work or exploit the disempowered?" The article says: "Just over half of Turkers earn below the US federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, according to a Pew Research Center study." The article quotes people who believe "it will become increasingly common for computer systems to orchestrate labor." That trend was also was the beginning of Marshall Brain's "Manna" short story.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.


Original Link: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/PoeQJvyJ1Lk/does-amazons-clickworker-platform-exploit-its-workers

Share this article:    Share on Facebook
View Full Article

Slashdot

Slashdot was originally created in September of 1997 by Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda. Today it is owned by Geeknet, Inc..

More About this Source Visit Slashdot