Paying Homage to Microwork
Unpacking the world of crowdsourcing from my tiny desk.
My hopes of becoming an Amazon Mechanical Turk worker were crushed after I had filled out my account application and received an email shortly afterwards that stated that I was not ‘eligible’.
I was not provided a reason for my rejection. In the email, Mechanical Turk simply said, “Customer Support is unable to change this decision and cannot share insight into invitation criteria. If our criteria for invitation changes, we may contact you to complete your registration in the future.”
I then got started on my Clickwork application which fortunately was approved right away. I perused the list of available jobs and selected a survey on my last travel experience.
Upon completing the survey, I was not given the code that would have indicated that the survey was satisfied with my answers, and thus I was not given the dollar I anticipated on receiving for finishing this work.
I was not feeling lucky with these microwork tasks. Plus, I was a bit skeptical about completing any of the jobs that required taking selfies. The fear of my face becoming a ‘deep-fake’ loomed in my mind. Did I want Clickwork to have ownership over my face — my data? I decided that it was in my best interest to complete jobs that required me to give as little information about myself as possible. However, this greatly narrowed the work available to me.
A short survey about Google Chrome users was the first job for which I received payment — of only a few cents. I considered that the reason why I didn’t receive a code and payment for my last survey on my travel history was because I may have completed it too quickly. I took my time with this one. However, I was just as careful with my answers for a few surveys on Peanut Labs but I still didn’t qualify for many of them because I didn’t fit the “desired demographic criteria or consumer habits” in a client. I managed to complete one more survey on the site, which would bring my total earnings to a mere $0.80, barely a dollar.
I can see why this work is called “microwork” for reasons beyond the fact that I am completing a small task that will contribute to a larger project. It requires me to reflect on the smallest details of my life that I would otherwise have forgotten, like through surveys that require me to recall how many times I have ordered carry-out or delivery pizza in the last six months from a certain business, or how many times I have spoken with a bank teller at Bank Of America in the last year.
However, I would be lying if I said that I enjoyed this work. I would put in the effort to complete a job and would often not be compensated for reasons that I would never know. In one instance, the survey closed before I finished completing my answers because the study had already reached their target number of participants.
I think that I underestimated this work that Atanasoski and Vora in their essay Surrogate Humanity had rendered as “ostensibly dull, dirty, repetitive, and uncreative work”, and yet Clickwork gig jobs are probably some of the more dignified and simple work that is considered surrogate labor.
Initially, I anticipated that I would make easy-money rapidly. Yet, I was struggling to make a menial dollar. In this frustration of feeling that my work is undervalued, I began to understand how surrogate labor produces the “invisibilized worker” not only by masking their identity but also by masking their emotion and stress.
Any sort of frustration I would experience in the process would never be known to Clickwork, to the corporations that benefit from these surveys — my feelings would be hidden, obscured. Yet, I had intentionally set myself up for this frustration by limiting the Clickwork jobs that I would complete.
Perhaps those people who don’t care for distributing their photos to ClickWork would find this microwork both effortless and profitable. Maybe, I had to reassess how I would approach the surveys. My responses did not have to reflect my own personal life — how would Clickwork know what was the truth?
The perks of the obscuration of my identity as a microworker meant that I could choose my race, my age, whether or not I have auto insurance, etc. The next day, I had tackled Clickwork with a more positive attitude, sure that I could trick the system into believing that I was an optimal candidate in whatever survey. Yet, I was quickly proven wrong after being rejected to participate in a survey through Peanut Labs because “data inconsistencies had been identified regarding the profile data” I provided.
Struggling to find available jobs on the Clickwork site, I settled for a task that I had dismissed at the start of my time as a microworker. I decided to take on the task of going to a Macy’s to take pictures of fragrances.
I downloaded the Clickwork app and drove to the store ready to make a good twenty dollars from this job. I sifted through the fragrance kiosk for a couple minutes but still could not find the first listing of Armani My Way.
I was soon interrupted by a store employee asking if I needed any help, and another employee also approached me as well. I suddenly felt overwhelmed. I felt like I couldn’t tell them I was completing a Clickwork job.
I felt like I was on a secret mission.
Perhaps, I came across as a bit sketchy which was why two employees approached me. The job on the app itself is listed as a “mystery visit”, and once my intentions were brought into question by someone else, I felt it was necessary to ‘abort the mission’. I asked about the availability of this first fragrance but they said that they didn’t carry it. I thanked them for their time, quickly left the Macy’s, and headed home.
The microwork I had completed was far from “fruitful”, a descriptive that Kala, a Mechanical Turk worker, had used to describe her microwork in Gray and Suri’s essay Ghostwork.
I had the flexibility to complete a task at any time, yet I didn’t have many options in tasks. Frankly, this attempt at microwork made me appreciate the projects in my life that I have most, if not all, control over the composition of a product — from start to finish.
I felt ‘detached’ and ‘insensitive’ in this “digital assembly line”.
Following these three days as a microworker, I decided to once again look at Angela Washko’s art installation that commemorates Amazon Mechanical Turk workers, and more broadly individuals performing any kind of crowd-sourced labor. I felt a greater affinity for these remarks on the Serf Installation.
One of my favorites reads: “I work my ass off doing all these surveys, and I’m really proud of it.” If I were to commit to this job long-term, I would probably be able to better detail the algorithmic cruelty of microwork in how it alienates the individual to perform tedious and repetitive work without the perks of company benefits, including mental health services.
Microwork should probably remain as a side-job, a brief stint to make money or make use of free time. Yet, not everyone has the privilege to obtain employment in more satisfactory jobs. I guess I would recommend Clickwork to everyone I know so that they can understand — empathize — for microworkers, and also familiarize themselves with the world of digital labor.
