10 ms·

As AMT's largest requester for the past 10 years, this news was relayed to requesters at the same time as respondents. It's also worth noting that our lead cont

As AMT's largest requester for the past 10 years, this news was relayed to requesters at the same time as respondents. It's also worth noting that our lead contact, the Sr Program Manager at AWS leading AMT, transitioned to Amazon Bedrock and SageMaker Model Evaluations a ~2-3 years ago.. Leaving behind essential zero team managing the project after they migrated over the stored value accounts to native AWS billing.

jan_Inkepa 23d ago
our of curiosity, can you say what your use of it was?
- x0xMaximus 23d ago
  Initially the annotation of biomedical literature (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25592589/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25592589/) but left academia for commercial use where we transitioned to arbitrage the market research and ephemeral task markets. It was essentially a research panel with a underdeveloped UI for tasks.. so abstract away AMT's tooling so it can be used by any buyer in the ResTech, Political Polling and Data Annotation space My favorite part of AMT is always going to be figuring out that if we only paid in $0.07 intervals, their commission algorithm would round down to the nearest whole cent when their 20% commission resulted in a fractional cent on the unit transaction level, not the monthly invoice level. Was ultimately worth it to have implemented https://git.generalresearch.com/panels/amt-jb/tree/jb/flow/assignment_tasks.py#n527 https://git.generalresearch.com/panels/amt-jb/tree/jb/flow/a...
  - BobbyTables2 23d ago
    That’s top-tier “OfficeSpace” thinking there…
  - loremm 23d ago
    I truly have no idea what this website is saying https://generalresearch.com/ https://generalresearch.com/
    - muragekibicho 23d ago
      Perhaps they're targeting a super specific niche. Like somebody who sees WXET Ephemereal and yelps in triumph "that's my quant!".
    - skinfaxi 23d ago
      Why it's Transactional Systems for Ephemeral Tasks, don't you know? No but same here. The other pages lead to more confusion.
      - freehorse 23d ago
        My favourite part is the "our customers" section [0], starting with > Ripe with fraud, labor exploitation, political polling manipulation I am not sure if they want to convey what I think I am reading or not. [0] https://generalresearch.com/mission/#:~:text=Our%20Customers https://generalresearch.com/mission/#:~:text=Our%20Customers
        x0xMaximus 23d ago
        Buyer A is presented with the following rate card: < 10min targeting gen pop: $3 10 <= 15min targeting gen pop: $5 Of course they'll bid saying their 14 min survey only takes 9 min to complete. Buyers try to cheat pricing strategies of exchanges just as much as respondents try to cheat buyers on survey platforms. Both parties can't be trusted and have adverse incentives.
    - tourist2d 23d ago
      It smells like they don't know what they're doing. Had a lol at the mission page accidentally implying their customers are unethical though: > Our Customers > Ripe with fraud, labor exploitation, political polling manipulation; our customers demand the best tools and security ...
      - DrewADesign 23d ago
        At least they’re ripe! I hate unripe customers, rife with astringency, sharp vegetal notes, and an unpleasant, unyielding texture.
  - deleted 23d ago
    [deleted]
  - m3rc 23d ago
    What's up with the part of the website where you are talking about "neutralized foreign actors", was that also using contracted Mechanical Turk labor?
    - x0xMaximus 23d ago
      The industry is so backwards, there are residential proxy companies that are directly paid by one of the largest market research firms. I have discussed this at length https://www.reddit.com/r/Marketresearch/comments/1s2tl0o/open_letter_to_cint_supplier_quality_issues/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Marketresearch/comments/1s2tl0o/ope... It should be a bipartisan issue that a Swedish company is paying a UAE Residential Proxy company [1] to build tools that allow people from anywhere in the world to take US political polls that are used by both parties to collect election data. Just for starters, you can't even think about soliciting online work from a panel without a robust residential proxy detection methods. We had to build our own: `wget -N 'https://grip.net/files/grip-proxy-30d.mmdb https://grip.net/files/grip-proxy-30d.mmdb'` [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOmeQcwSK3o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOmeQcwSK3o flagged by Nokia Deepfield and CTRL for it's involvement in botnets
      - charcircuit 23d ago
        Someone using an IP that a geoip database says is US, doesn't mean that person is a US voter. The existence of proxies on the internet is a feature.
        x0xMaximus 23d ago
        Obviously, a problem not even fully addressed by L2’s datasets. Sure, but the use of proxies to masquerade the identity of users being sold to researcher buyers that paid for a different service is fraud
        charcircuit 23d ago
        It makes me question why the surveys don't ask for the users country. That way they cd can figure it out without trying to guess it based off of IP.
  - swyx 23d ago
    > My favorite part of AMT is always going to be figuring out that if we only paid in $0.07 intervals, their commission algorithm would round down to the nearest whole cent when their 20% commission resulted in a fractional cent on the unit transaction level, not the monthly invoice level. can someone ELI5 because what in the office space
    - testbjjl 23d ago
      It was cheaper and looser automated billing practices than current AI “solutions”?
    - ramses0 23d ago
      Go watch Superman III for more details...
      - libria 23d ago
        Or Office Space
    - owebmaster 23d ago
      20% of 0.07 was billed as 1 cent, not 1.4 nor rounded up to 2.
      - x0xMaximus 23d ago
        1
      - rkozik1989 22d ago
        Imagine your favorite feature of a product was spend 1 cent on a real human being time and effort rather than 2 cents.
        ShinyLeftPad 22d ago
        Or spend the same and let the human earn more?
        22d ago
  - Nition 23d ago
    > Can you say what your use of it was? > Initially the annotation of biomedical literature but left academia for commercial use where we transitioned to arbitrage the market research and ephemeral task markets. It was essentially a research panel with a underdeveloped UI for tasks.. so abstract away AMT's tooling so it can be used by any buyer in the ResTech, Political Polling and Data Annotation space. Reading this is similar to how I feel when I've asked Claude about something it coded for me. As with Claude, I think I get it after reading it three times; you guys were a middleman that provided a simplified interface for Mechanical Turk?
    - ShinyLeftPad 22d ago
      > Reading this is similar to how I feel when I've asked Claude about something it coded for me I didn't feel like that at all.
  - wuschel 22d ago
    > My favorite part of AMT is always going to be figuring out that if we only paid in $0.07 intervals, That is hilarious! Was it a semi-random discovery due to interaction with the system and people, or did you intentionally looked to game the algorithm?
    - x0xMaximus 22d ago
      Do you know how much inn-n-out you can buy when saving ~$50 a day and still be in the positive! It came out of building our own ledger system and abandoning any Decimal or float operations early on.. then it sparks "I wonder how they do it and if it's correct??"
testbjjl 23d ago
Sounds like your program manager was smart and valuable to the company. Do you have any plans to replace the service/data provided by MTurk?

jan_Inkepa 23d ago

our of curiosity, can you say what your use of it was?

x0xMaximus 23d ago
Initially the annotation of biomedical literature (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25592589/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25592589/) but left academia for commercial use where we transitioned to arbitrage the market research and ephemeral task markets. It was essentially a research panel with a underdeveloped UI for tasks.. so abstract away AMT's tooling so it can be used by any buyer in the ResTech, Political Polling and Data Annotation space My favorite part of AMT is always going to be figuring out that if we only paid in $0.07 intervals, their commission algorithm would round down to the nearest whole cent when their 20% commission resulted in a fractional cent on the unit transaction level, not the monthly invoice level. Was ultimately worth it to have implemented https://git.generalresearch.com/panels/amt-jb/tree/jb/flow/assignment_tasks.py#n527 https://git.generalresearch.com/panels/amt-jb/tree/jb/flow/a...
- BobbyTables2 23d ago
  That’s top-tier “OfficeSpace” thinking there…
- loremm 23d ago
  I truly have no idea what this website is saying https://generalresearch.com/ https://generalresearch.com/
  - muragekibicho 23d ago
    Perhaps they're targeting a super specific niche. Like somebody who sees WXET Ephemereal and yelps in triumph "that's my quant!".
  - skinfaxi 23d ago
    Why it's Transactional Systems for Ephemeral Tasks, don't you know? No but same here. The other pages lead to more confusion.
    - freehorse 23d ago
      My favourite part is the "our customers" section [0], starting with > Ripe with fraud, labor exploitation, political polling manipulation I am not sure if they want to convey what I think I am reading or not. [0] https://generalresearch.com/mission/#:~:text=Our%20Customers https://generalresearch.com/mission/#:~:text=Our%20Customers
      - x0xMaximus 23d ago
        Buyer A is presented with the following rate card: < 10min targeting gen pop: $3 10 <= 15min targeting gen pop: $5 Of course they'll bid saying their 14 min survey only takes 9 min to complete. Buyers try to cheat pricing strategies of exchanges just as much as respondents try to cheat buyers on survey platforms. Both parties can't be trusted and have adverse incentives.
  - tourist2d 23d ago
    It smells like they don't know what they're doing. Had a lol at the mission page accidentally implying their customers are unethical though: > Our Customers > Ripe with fraud, labor exploitation, political polling manipulation; our customers demand the best tools and security ...
    - DrewADesign 23d ago
      At least they’re ripe! I hate unripe customers, rife with astringency, sharp vegetal notes, and an unpleasant, unyielding texture.
- deleted 23d ago
  [deleted]
- m3rc 23d ago
  What's up with the part of the website where you are talking about "neutralized foreign actors", was that also using contracted Mechanical Turk labor?
  - x0xMaximus 23d ago
    The industry is so backwards, there are residential proxy companies that are directly paid by one of the largest market research firms. I have discussed this at length https://www.reddit.com/r/Marketresearch/comments/1s2tl0o/open_letter_to_cint_supplier_quality_issues/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Marketresearch/comments/1s2tl0o/ope... It should be a bipartisan issue that a Swedish company is paying a UAE Residential Proxy company [1] to build tools that allow people from anywhere in the world to take US political polls that are used by both parties to collect election data. Just for starters, you can't even think about soliciting online work from a panel without a robust residential proxy detection methods. We had to build our own: `wget -N 'https://grip.net/files/grip-proxy-30d.mmdb https://grip.net/files/grip-proxy-30d.mmdb'` [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOmeQcwSK3o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOmeQcwSK3o flagged by Nokia Deepfield and CTRL for it's involvement in botnets
    - charcircuit 23d ago
      Someone using an IP that a geoip database says is US, doesn't mean that person is a US voter. The existence of proxies on the internet is a feature.
      - x0xMaximus 23d ago
        Obviously, a problem not even fully addressed by L2’s datasets. Sure, but the use of proxies to masquerade the identity of users being sold to researcher buyers that paid for a different service is fraud
        charcircuit 23d ago
        It makes me question why the surveys don't ask for the users country. That way they cd can figure it out without trying to guess it based off of IP.
- swyx 23d ago
  > My favorite part of AMT is always going to be figuring out that if we only paid in $0.07 intervals, their commission algorithm would round down to the nearest whole cent when their 20% commission resulted in a fractional cent on the unit transaction level, not the monthly invoice level. can someone ELI5 because what in the office space
  - testbjjl 23d ago
    It was cheaper and looser automated billing practices than current AI “solutions”?
  - ramses0 23d ago
    Go watch Superman III for more details...
    - libria 23d ago
      Or Office Space
  - owebmaster 23d ago
    20% of 0.07 was billed as 1 cent, not 1.4 nor rounded up to 2.
    - x0xMaximus 23d ago
      1
    - rkozik1989 22d ago
      Imagine your favorite feature of a product was spend 1 cent on a real human being time and effort rather than 2 cents.
      - ShinyLeftPad 22d ago
        Or spend the same and let the human earn more?
      - 22d ago
- Nition 23d ago
  > Can you say what your use of it was? > Initially the annotation of biomedical literature but left academia for commercial use where we transitioned to arbitrage the market research and ephemeral task markets. It was essentially a research panel with a underdeveloped UI for tasks.. so abstract away AMT's tooling so it can be used by any buyer in the ResTech, Political Polling and Data Annotation space. Reading this is similar to how I feel when I've asked Claude about something it coded for me. As with Claude, I think I get it after reading it three times; you guys were a middleman that provided a simplified interface for Mechanical Turk?
  - ShinyLeftPad 22d ago
    > Reading this is similar to how I feel when I've asked Claude about something it coded for me I didn't feel like that at all.
- wuschel 22d ago
  > My favorite part of AMT is always going to be figuring out that if we only paid in $0.07 intervals, That is hilarious! Was it a semi-random discovery due to interaction with the system and people, or did you intentionally looked to game the algorithm?
  - x0xMaximus 22d ago
    Do you know how much inn-n-out you can buy when saving ~$50 a day and still be in the positive! It came out of building our own ledger system and abandoning any Decimal or float operations early on.. then it sparks "I wonder how they do it and if it's correct??"

testbjjl 23d ago

Sounds like your program manager was smart and valuable to the company. Do you have any plans to replace the service/data provided by MTurk?