Rep Present YooLotto

[electrolyte]

We've tried testing on MTurk, but they took down our HIT after 12 hours because a worker flagged our HIT as our task involved downloading other apps....they are stating that we are advertising for other company. (we had approved/rewarded over 10 jobs already). ===> to be clear, we are not as we need to black list the apps that do not reward for our actual users....

What do you guys suggest? I've already spoken to customer service and they've mentioned that our task is against the policy. I'm wondering if MTurk is suitable or not for our public QA testing

Workers flagging HITs doesn't automatically remove them from MTurk. It requires action on MTurk's side to review those flags and determine if they should be removed. If MTurk looked at the HITs and thought they were in violation and then removed them, it sounds like you'll need to convince MTurk that your tasks follow the Terms of Service or else they'll continue to get removed and possibly your account suspended.

 

[EricYooLotto]

I think it would help to be clear about both what you're asking for and why. Based on the review I'm seeing for your requester account on Turkopticon (https://turkopticon.ucsd.edu/reports?id=A2F9GZCGDIYRA8), it doesn't seem like the instructions do so. Actually, based on that feedback, it sounds like the HIT is trying to get workers to farm YooBux and give over their personal information so you can cash them in for profit as opposed to a legitimate company trying to run QA testing on their own app service. I could be wrong, but I thought downloading 3rd party software was no longer against mTurk TOS? If that's the case, then the issue is probably because you're asking for email login information, which can be circumvented by giving workers' a dummy login/password instead of asking them to make an account and give over the info. You can raise the compensation too--if your HIT pays well, it's a lot less likely to sit around waiting to be flagged, it makes what you're doing seem much less like a scam, and you'll start receiving positive reviews which will enhance your credibility as a requester and attract a better pool of workers.

Workers flagging HITs doesn't automatically remove them from MTurk. It requires action on MTurk's side to review those flags and determine if they should be removed. If MTurk looked at the HITs and thought they were in violation and then removed them, it sounds like you'll need to convince MTurk that your tasks follow the Terms of Service or else they'll continue to get removed and possibly your account suspended.

@Eris & @electrolyte Thank you so much for your help and feedback guys, we really appreciate the help. I actually got a hold of Amazon MTurk's Director through our business partner rep at Amazon, and working through how & what we need to do and the investigation team's response. They suspended and took our money(~$1500) yesterday, but seems like our account is back up with the funds now. We will update you on what they tell us on why and what we need to do.

 

[YooLotto]

Hi everyone!

If you've read the thread, you know we had an issue with our HITs being flagged for TOS violations in their first iterations because we did not present our purpose well to workers. Our account has since been unfrozen, and now we are trying to re-do the whole project. The gist is still the same though: we are a cash rewards app in need of workers to check to see if our offers are working and rewarding our users correctly. Please check out our HITs and let me know if you have any questions!

Edited: To reflect new information.

 

[heeheehahaha]

Hello

I didnt see any of your HITs up today, so hopefully that means you have workers completing them.

I am interested in your HITs so i'll be staying on the lookout for them now

 

[YooLotto]

Hello

I didnt see any of your HITs up today, so hopefully that means you have workers completing them.

I am interested in your HITs so i'll be staying on the lookout for them now

Thanks for expressing interest! If you shoot me your MTurk ID, I can post a HIT for you so you can try it out when it's convenient.

 

[ashleymarie]

This sounds like a tedious, but VERY important task and it sounds like you're on the ball with getting things ship-shape, Maki! There's nothing worse than applying for an offer in an app and then not getting credited for it, so I think it says a lot about YooLotto that they're trying to find ways to fix this. I'll definitely keep an eye out for the HITs as well!

 

[YooLotto]

This sounds like a tedious, but VERY important task and it sounds like you're on the ball with getting things ship-shape, Maki! There's nothing worse than applying for an offer in an app and then not getting credited for it, so I think it says a lot about YooLotto that they're trying to find ways to fix this. I'll definitely keep an eye out for the HITs as well!

Thanks @ashleymarie! You're right that it's a tall order but still very important if we want our offer rewards program to succeed. There will be a new batch of HITs going up in the next couple of hours. If you or anyone else who reads this would like to try it out and give me feedback, please message me your MTurk ID and I can make sure you have a HIT available. In particular, I'm looking to find out whether the pay is fair for what we're asking for in terms of the time and effort involved, and if there's any way we can improve the HITs for workers so the task itself is less arduous.

 

[heeheehahaha]

Saw the HIT today, Ill have to wait until you are testing Android

Title: Test our free mobile app and earn up to $2.25! *iOS only* (~ 16 minutes) | PANDA Requester: YL Testing [A1LELMCN74U8JZ] (TO) TO Ratings: 5.00 Communicativity 3.90 Generosity 4.56 Fairness 4.56 Promptness Number of Reviews: 15 (Submit a new TO rating for this requester) Description: Test our free mobile app and share your findings with us! Please only complete one of our HITs per day. Time: 1 hour 30 minutes Hits Available: 3 Reward: $1.75 Qualifications: Exc: [-1462185634-11045] has not been granted; Excluded workers has not been granted; Total approved HITs is not less than 50; HIT approval rate (%) is not less than 97; Location is one of: US

 

[Tigerpants]

Hello @YooLotto!

I completed one of your HITs today for the first time, after receiving the qualification. The first question was to download and start the app, but I opted to keep it since I knew I would like to work on your hits more in the future. So I chose to test an offer, and I also tested 2 different offers instead because I already had the apps on my phone.

But after the 5 minute timer ran down, the questions about whether I received my incentive or not where still for the original questions, so it was hard for me to determine which offers worked and which didn't. Fortunately I wrote down the amounts I was supposed to get and my original balance, so I could make a good estimate, but I wasn't certain.

I would also like to know if you would prefer us to uninstall apps we may already use and reinstall them through the app? That seems a bit like gaming the system to me, if I was a regular user as opposed to a tester, which is why I chose to try a different offer.

As a follow up, should I be uninstalling YooLotto after every HIT? It says to 'feel free to uninstall' but as I said before, I chose to keep it just to make the HITs run a bit smoother for me.

Thank you!

 

[Tigerpants]

Also, I've noticed on your watch videos HITs there's no way to tell you how many, if any, of your video offers redeemed, do you just crosscheck all the completed HITs?

 

[electrolyte]

Read this important review on Turkopticon about YooLotto and the recent testing HITs: https://turkopticon.ucsd.edu/get_report/317456

Please be aware that MTurkCrowd will not be allowing the paid promotion of HITs or recruitment of workers for a project that is deceptive and in violation of MTurk's Terms of Service.

Remember to be respectful in any further discussions regarding this requester.

 

[Metallica]

Why are you expecting people to work for slave wages? Or sell our data to other companies? Or just be shady in general.

First, you decide to post a hit for 75c asking to download your app. Sure, let's do that. Two weeks later, you ask people to take a qual test for $2.60 an hour. Cool, let's hope it gets better. Onto the real hits. Wow, $3 an hour. That's awesome.

Second, you are manipulating us by generating click-through traffic to your 'broken' apps and videos. You know exactly what you are using us for.

Third, GIVE THE PERSON WHO HELPED YOU HER MONEY. I do not appreciate you are trying to email workers to get them to advertise, when you know you could just advertise yourself all over the internet if it wasn't for you knowingly paying slave wages to workers to do it for themselves.

Lastly, thank you very much for ignoring the emails I, along with many others, have sent to you.

[mod edit]

 

[YooLotto]

Read this important review on Turkopticon about YooLotto and the recent testing HITs: https://turkopticon.ucsd.edu/get_report/317456

Please be aware that MTurkCrowd will not be allowing the paid promotion of HITs or recruitment of workers for a project that is deceptive and in violation of MTurk's Terms of Service.

Remember to be respectful in any further discussions regarding this requester.

Hello,

We were looking for help to engage with the community, not do paid promotions of our HITs... But we'll keep this in mind and abide by the rules! As for our HITs, we believe that we have taken out the parts that are in violation of the TOS. Please let me know if we are still breaking the TOS, and we'll work hard to fix them immediately.

 

[YooLotto]

Why are you expecting people to work for slave wages? Or sell our data to other companies? Or just be shady in general.

First, you decide to post a hit for 75c asking to download your app. Sure, let's do that. Two weeks later, you ask people to take a qual test for $2.60 an hour. Cool, let's hope it gets better. Onto the real hits. Wow, $3 an hour. That's awesome.

Second, you are manipulating us by generating click-through traffic to your 'broken' apps and videos. You know exactly what you are using us for.

Third, GIVE THE PERSON WHO HELPED YOU HER MONEY. I do not appreciate you are trying to email workers to get them to advertise, when you know you could just advertise yourself all over the internet if it wasn't for you knowingly paying slave wages to workers to do it for themselves.

Lastly, thank you very much for ignoring the emails I, along with many others, have sent to you.

[mod edit]

Hello Janthir,

I'm sorry that the pay is not so good. We initially budgeted out amounts expecting the HITs to take only 10-15 minutes. But adding in the screenshots for quality control has really affected the hourly pay... I'll work with our team to address this.

 

[Tribune]

I wouldn't touch this requester's HITs with a pole, even if they paid adequately.

TOS violations are sometimes due to an honest "mistake," by requesters unacquainted with the rules.
This requester would rather argue that the sun is blue.

 

[Metallica]

I wouldn't touch this requester's HITs with a pole, even if they paid adequately.

TOS violations are sometimes due to an honest "mistake," by requesters unacquainted with the rules.
This requester would rather argue that the sun is blue.

Perhaps 7/11 should be informed of this, since they're partnered and all.

 

[kryss]

Just a reminder: Please remember to keep things professional and respectful.

 

[Eris]

Hello,

We were looking for help to engage with the community, not do paid promotions of our HITs... But we'll keep this in mind and abide by the rules!

Spoiler: Message from YL Testing

Log in or register now. to view Spoiler content!

Spoiler: The response after I inquired further:

Log in or register now. to view Spoiler content!

If the point is not to do pay people to promote your HITs and recruit new "testers," I would suggest making that more clear. I am confused why "users/testers" are combined as one in your reply, since the point of your MTurk testing is NOT to generate users, right? I also don't understand why you need to recruit more testers before you can afford to pay the ones you have fairly.

As for our HITs, we believe that we have taken out the parts that are in violation of the TOS. Please let me know if we are still breaking the TOS, and we'll work hard to fix them immediately.

Not exhaustive by any means, but for starters:

• collecting personal identifiable information (like you state you collect in your privacy policy)
• HITs that require Workers to download software that contains any malware, spyware, viruses, or other harmful code (I received reports from Android users of several malware apps)
• HITs that ask Workers to take action to manipulate a website's behavior or results (i.e. download rankings of affiliated apps, your own rankings on app stores)
• HITs that generate "referred" site visits or click-through traffic (previously admitted in prior post before being edited out)
• HITs that directly or indirectly promote a site, service, or opinion (i.e. promoting YooLotto and all of your affiliate-linked apps through the offers you're "testing," asking workers to use the apps they're "testing" for bonuses for the longer they do)
• HITs requiring registration at another website or group (registering for a YooLotto account with a valid email in order to verify)
• HITs requiring disclosure of the Worker's identity or e-mail address, either directly or indirectly (see above)
• creating a security risk for Mechanical Turk, any Mechanical Turk user, or any third party (some apps ask for invasive permissions, and YooLotto itself wants access to everything from your photos to your contacts which they can use for any commercial purpose according to their privacy policy)
• unsolicited contacting of users (I receive several emails a day from you guys, including the most recent ones asking me to become a "Champion", without ever having signed up for email notifications)
• spamming (see above)
• direct marketing (all of your current video HITs that require workers to sit through multiple advertisements before they can even test an offer)
• fraud (Are your advertisers and investors aware of this "testing"? Do they think workers are genuine daily users?)

In terms of finding broken offers, can you explain how your most recent HITs work? You have added in a new feature to your app called "Watch Video" that only pays out 1 Yoobux ($0.01) per min and nothing for the apps downloaded that all of your HITs now direct workers to test. However, you've also added in significant advertising over the last few days, such that for repeat workers to download unique apps, they can end up watching 3-10+ advertisements before they can even get to an app that's eligible for the HIT. You also stated in a mass email to workers that you only have 60-65 different videos available at the moment--I'm guessing that includes advertisements so even less actual offers--so why exactly do you need hundreds of people to test the same things to see if they're working? Why is there no longer even a way to report if the offer was successful, despite that still being included in the instructions?

I'm sorry, I'm just really having a hard time understanding how you're identifying broken offers from these current HITs, and it would go a long way towards reassuring people if you would explain how this fits with your stated purpose. From my vantage point, it looks like you found a way to ensure turkers don't earn Yoobux in-app while also subjecting them to targeted advertisting and generating click-through money for offers you already know work, and likely pay you the most from your advertising affiliates. It's worth noting that when I was working on the project, there was no outside advertising in-app except for the offers themselves, so that in itself is a new feature.

 

[Metallica]

@Eris would you mind adding this thread to your TO post? I think it would go a long way towards helping others.

 

[Eris]

@Eris would you mind adding this thread to your TO post? I think it would go a long way towards helping others.

Thanks for the suggestion, it's been added to the top as an update. If this is all a misunderstanding, I hope they choose to respond and address these concerns.