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RE: Exposing the "Steemit Defense League" - Bought Accounts on Microworkers w/Screenshots
Great detective work!
I still have two questions:
- In a comment you mention other site like Microworker, did you also check if there was created such a campaign ?
- It seems like you messaged Microworkers, did you ask about the campaign, how many users handed over the keys with usernames or how much was spend for it ?
@naturicia
Thank you, and here are the answers I can give.
I am afraid I did not check the others. I never got my account approved for Mechanical Turk (although I know they have good standards, so they probably wouldn't allow this sort of campaign), and I haven't checked Clickworkers for like a year because I found that Microworkers is the only one where I can find decent paying jobs. I don't see anything on Clickworkers now, but I have no idea if anything was ever up on that site. Their standards are similar to Microworkers though, so they also might not allow such a campaign. As I mentioned in the article, this campaign did violate Microworkers rules, but it somehow slipped through temporarily.
On that note, because I did not do this job on Microworkers, I didn't keep a close eye on it. I remember seeing that at least 70 people had turned in the task. However, it was 12-24 hours after that when it was cancelled, so it would be more than 70 accounts if all workers did the job correctly. I think that the job was looking for 100 workers, but I don't remember for sure. Since the job was cancelled by Microworkers, rather than completed, that means he did not get to 100 people. People were taking it pretty slowly, so I doubt he got too close to 100. Therefore, I can say with a moderate degree of confidence that he got between 70-90 accounts. I've seen people say that about 76+ accounts are associated with the Defense League, so that sounds about right. Can't be 100% sure though.
Edit: As for the price you asked about, I'm really totally sure. The price depends a lot on what region he selected. For example, it is more expensive to get workers from the US and Europe since the cost of living is higher in those countries. Microworkers makes you pay more to specifically target Western workers. On the other hand, if he let people in Africa and Asia do it, it would be much cheaper. I think about the lowest it could get would be 11 cents a job. Or about 20 cents if Microworkers determined it was a "complex signup" - which they should have. If he got Americans it would be 40-50 cents per person, with a fee for starting the tasks. Here is what it looks like setting up a "complex signup" task with American Workers:
And here is a "complex signup" task without any country restrictions (includes the whole world):
It's amazing what you can do by throwing a couple quarters at people.