Building Trust in Crowd Worker Forums: Worker Ownership, Governance,

and Work Outcomes

Rochelle LaPlante & M. Six Silberman

CROWD WORKER FORUMS

➤ Crowd worker forums serve as sites for trust-building between workers.

➤ The four largest Mechanical Turk worker forums have different management styles.

➤ We expect a worker-owned, democratically governed forum to increase trust among stakeholders and lead to better outcomes.

WHY CROWD WORKER FORUMS?

➤ Amazon Mechanical Turk requesters can reject work for any reason.

➤ Worker receives no payment and platform approval rating is lowered with no support or appeal process from Amazon.

➤ In response, workers have developed their own methods to protect themselves and share information: worker forums.

WHY WORKERS USE FORUMS

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

Find HITs Share HITs Read/Share Info Socialization Community

BUILDING TRUST IN WORKER FORUMS

➤ Workers often email new requesters to test responsiveness and to determine if the requester appears trustworthy.

➤ Received information is shared on worker forums.

➤ Transitive trust is established.

Direct trust

Direct trustTransitive trust

Requester Worker B

Worker A

C

BENEFITS OF SHARED TRUST

➤ People who trust each other make more informed and educated decisions based on shared information.

➤ Better communication and increased trust leads to better outcomes.

➤ For workers: fewer rejections, higher effective wage, a better work experience. For requesters: higher quality work.

“Workers collaborate by referring tasks to each other. Here again workers use their social connections to convey trust, this time to convey trust that a task or requester is legitimate and will pay.

-Gray, M. L., S. Suri, S. S. Ali, D. Kulkarni. The crowd is a collaborative network. CSCW ’16: 134.

FORUM DESIGN TO PROMOTE TRUST

➤ Ownership: worker-owned versus investors

➤ Democratic decisions versus hierarchical leadership

➤ Members enforce community norms and flag issues for moderators

➤ Distribution of labor among forum members

THE MTURK CROWD STORY

➤ Workers wanted shared decision making, open and public discussion.

➤ 4 co-administrators and 4 supporting moderators.

➤ Decision making: monthly staff meetings, community polls, group discussion threads.

FUTURE CHALLENGES

➤ Amazon provides no way for workers to contact each other.

➤ Outreach is difficult since HITs advertising services are prohibited.

➤ Reaching more workers would build more trust and improve outcomes. How can this be accomplished?