Week 4: New Media Enterprises
The Mechanical Turk: Just one more HIT
During week 4 we looked at New Media enterprises, the businesses surrounding new media and the exploitation's that come with it. What struck me most during week 4's content was the idea of the mechanical turk, an online crowd sourcing marketplace (so they say) where anyone can sort data for that cash money. A whole 1 dollar an hour if you're blitzing through it! sit down for 7 hours and you've earned lunch at subway. It isn't slavery, not is it exploitation, users can choose when to work and how long they do it for, what strikes me is how genius it is, it's almost like a game so users find it fun. However as with any game has anyone cheated yet? numerous online games have false accounts known as bots which gather a certain beneficial currency or item within that game world, the bot owner can go to work and come home to a computer program which has been doing all the work for him/her, could a bot be programmed for amazon's the mechanical turk, could this program sort through data and earn the owner cash much like that in an online game. Further more is this concept of "goldfarming" much like the turk, employees play games for hours on end acquiring virtual gold and selling it for real world money, the gatherers are maybe payed on an hourly low rate, whilst the employers sell these virtual stockpiles off for ridiculously high sums of money, sometimes into the thousands for a single package, what's more is the process is illegal it violates countless laws that protects game developers and the rights of workers, (Ahmad 2009) further explains goldfarming and it's illegal properties. This form of crowd sourcing is financially genius and teeming with ethical concern.
What I further found fascinating was the use of targeted advertising, the way you use the online world is analyzed and from that advertisements you see in your feed, or online are all tailored by you and your interests, this form of advertising which I also covered last week allows companies particularly social media companies to acquire large revenue by initially selling off information (Fuchs 2013) further looks into targeted advertising and how it works in an online political and capitalist environment.
Sauter, Theresa. Dr. 2014. “KCB206 Internet, Self and Beyond: Week 4 lecture notes.” Accessed March 28, 2014.
Fuchs, Christian, (2013). Chapter 5 : The Power and Political Economy of Social Media. In Fuchs, Christian, Social media : a critical introduction, (pp.97 - 125). London, UK: Sage Publications.
Ahmad, M.A. ; Dept. of Comput. Sci. & Eng., Univ. of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA ; Keegan, B. ; Srivastava, J. ; Williams, D.
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