Upcycling STEEM #3 : Amazon Mechanical Turk - would that work on Steem?
Have you heard of Amazon's Mechanical Turk?
It is a crowdsourcing platform run by Amazon where many people can do many small tasks to earn lots of very small payments.
Sounds a bit like Steem doesn't it?
This is Wikipedia's fuller description....
Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is a crowdsourcing Internet marketplace enabling individuals and businesses (known as Requesters) to coordinate the use of human intelligence to perform tasks that computers are currently unable to do. It is owned by Amazon. Employers are able to post jobs known as Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs), such as choosing the best among several photographs of a storefront, writing product descriptions, or identifying performers on music CDs. Workers, colloquially known as Turkers, can then browse among existing jobs and complete them in exchange for a monetary payment set by the employer.
That looks interesting. Steem has lots of people willing to do small 'proof-of-brain' tasks to earn small payments.
The problem is with the current model, as Matt @starkerz of @oracle-d as eloquently conveyed, you can't keep taking out of the Reward Pool if nothing is being put in. Otherwise the price of STEEM will just keep going down...
Could a Steem Mechanical Turk be part of a solution?
Steem is perfectly equipped to make multiple micropayments.
And Oracle-D have demonstrated 'proof-of-concept' for operating a system not too dissimilar, albeit with fewer workers and larger tasks. External clients invest in Steem, steemians do tasks for them and get paid in upvotes.
Could something like the Oracle-D system be retooled to build a Mechanical Turk for Steem...?
I have not worked for the Amazon Mechanical Turk, nor do I have much more knowledge of it, but it was just another little idea I found at the bottom of my Upcycling STEEM toolbox.
Anyone out there worked for the Amazon Mechanical Turk?
Would this be a way of bringing money into the platform from 'Requesters'
Am I way off balance on this? Or is it a possibility worth exploring?
Here are a few links that give a bit more information and opinion...
Finally, Amazon Pays You: Earn $15 an Hour with Amazon Mechanical Turk
Mechanical Turk Review : How I Made $21,000 a Quarter at a Time
[ graphic by @pennsif ]
I currently do some work for MTurk. The problem is, you don't get paid NEAR $15/hr. You don't get paid near minimum wage. It's highly underpaid.
That being said, when you're disabled without a disability check (me), you're desperate and will do it a little to make ends meet.
I would LOVE it on Steem. For one, the payments might be a bit more decent if Amazon wasn't taking a cut. For two, well, Amazon is kinda evil and really exploitative and extra centralized...
This. I also did mechanical Turk for a while when I was new to a city and finding regular work was overwhelming. And, if I had used the sums to buy Bitcoin at the time I would have been ok now. But they were pittances.
Posted using Partiko Android
I would be interested to hear more about your experiences.
Again maybe do a post on it...
Hi @phoenixwren, sorry missed this before.
I would love to hear more about your experiences on MTurk.
Do you think it could work in some way on Steem, from what you have seen?
Maybe do a post on it if you fancy. Drop me the link, or tag me if you do.
Editor of the The State of Steem SoS Daily News.
Promoter of The State of Steem SoS Weekly Forums.
Editor of the weekly listing of steem radio shows, podcasts & social broadcasts.
Founder of the A Dollar A Day charitable giving project.
If theres some demand for it, Id definitely make it on Steem with my Engine project. It’s not a very complicated task, except for the build your own requests feature...
That's cool, thanks @shredz7. I am hoping I can get access to MTurk to see more, to build a better spec.
Amazon haven't accepted my application so far 😢
Hey, @pennsif!
Thank you for your contribution to the crowd. We are the Steemit project dedicated to empowering The Wisdom of Crowds. You can find more about us on our official website or whitepaper and you can support us by voting for our witness and joining our curation trail on Steemauto . We are also inviting you to join Crowdmind Discord server. Don't forget to use the #crowdmind hashtag and happy crowdsourcing!
Additional comment: We agree with you. The Mechanical Turk is one example - the key is to harness the wisdom of the crowd trough as many dapps as possible. Thank you for this interesting observation!
Best regards
@hidden84
I like this idea but over my head I will admit but the concept sounds good 💯🐒
Will be interesting to see if this could be made to work here.
Sure always worth a try and to me it sounds great 💯🐒