JULY–AUGUST 2014 INTERACTIONS 33 INTERACTIONS.ACM.ORG
between jubilant speculation and
“sweatshop” exposés, while those
invested in the long-term future of
crowdsourcing try to formulate agendas
for meaningful, pleasant, and even just
futures of work. We entered the debate
critical but open-minded—we were
not “Turkers,” but we were computing
workers more broadly concerned
about the futures of work being built
in our field and industry. Following
philosopher Donna Haraway, we chose
to stay with the trouble. We began with
designs on crowd-powered computing
but have stayed engaged over the past
six years, becoming part of the Turker
ecology through maintenance, repair,
Turkopticon going.

Turkopticon came out of engagements with Turkers in 2008, when we asked them—through Mechanical Turk itself—to articulate a hypothetical Bill of Rights. Rather than a rigorous survey, the elicitation invited workers to imagine what “better” crowdwork might mean.

Responses to the survey were diverse
and sometimes conflicting. But eight
themes recurred: uncertainty about
payment, unaccountable and seemingly
arbitrary rejections (i.e., non-payment),
fraudulent tasks, prohibitive time limits,
long pay delays, uncommunicative
requesters and administrators,
costs of employer errors borne
by workers, and frequently low
pay. Over the years, Turkers have
grounded our understandings of
microwork’s benefits and drawbacks.
For example, AMT brings stopgap,
short-term jobs to those with limited
employment options because of
geography, mobility limitations,
or economic conditions. Yet many
workers still find themselves working
in a system with limited recourse
when faced with wage theft or
disciplining by requesters or Amazon.
In response to our interactions
with Turkers, we designed and built I L L
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