Your attempt to invoke strong emotions may be a useful rhetoric instrument, but it is absolutely not adding anything to those doing the jobs at MT.
How in the world can you even waste your time on criticising use of a high-tech product that is available only to those with a computer and access to internet? Surely there are those who are exploited much much more than users of MT? Especially, if your own link shows that 82% of survey responders answered that the income was not essential.
This is game theory all over again. If "ethical" people wont use MT, only the bad guys will reap the benefits of the increased efficiency. Shaming people doesn't help much if the "right" option is detrimental to their incentives.
Moreover, your US-centrism is showing in full force. Don't you think that paying an Indian or Romanian 25 cents/hour is disgusting? Ok, you hired some of your friends for $12-15/h for mechanical job. So ethical. Why didn't you do that in an English-speaking part of the world where citizens live for less then $1 per day. Wouldnt it be more ethical?
If you are concerned about education of poor children: spread knowledge about moocs, help with youth coding camps, tutor people or do free seminars.
And if you are really-really concerned about the Mechanical Turk then by all means go ahead and teach people who are on MT how to earn more, that would be so much better than complaining on HN about the ethics of MT.
I am not trying to shame anyone, and yes, I am involved in researching solutions for a project that aims to help people in poverty empower themselves through providing data processing services. I also accept lower wages to be able to work on projects that are beneficial socially and have rejected offers to work in industries like high frequency trading that were very lucrative. I have spent hundreds of hours volunteering in my life teaching reading, ged, and esl in low income and even volunteered to teach ged material in a jail. We can all help in many ways, but the main point is having good regulation and rules is beneficial to capitalism. The best solution would be proper regulation of mturk to make sure that all businesses are on a level playing ground, whether they use mturk or another solution that at the moment may be more expensive in order to ensure minimum wage. But until that regulation happens, or mturk ensures minimum wage, I won't use mturk for any project.
How in the world can you even waste your time on criticising use of a high-tech product that is available only to those with a computer and access to internet? Surely there are those who are exploited much much more than users of MT? Especially, if your own link shows that 82% of survey responders answered that the income was not essential.
This is game theory all over again. If "ethical" people wont use MT, only the bad guys will reap the benefits of the increased efficiency. Shaming people doesn't help much if the "right" option is detrimental to their incentives.
Moreover, your US-centrism is showing in full force. Don't you think that paying an Indian or Romanian 25 cents/hour is disgusting? Ok, you hired some of your friends for $12-15/h for mechanical job. So ethical. Why didn't you do that in an English-speaking part of the world where citizens live for less then $1 per day. Wouldnt it be more ethical?
If you are concerned about education of poor children: spread knowledge about moocs, help with youth coding camps, tutor people or do free seminars.
And if you are really-really concerned about the Mechanical Turk then by all means go ahead and teach people who are on MT how to earn more, that would be so much better than complaining on HN about the ethics of MT.