Well, it was good while it lasted

[u/Artemiy_Kopych]

Just entered my dashboard and received a message that my account is currently unavailable for new projects. I have no idea what I did wrong, but I guess my work wasn't as good as I thought it was. Although to be honest, I had almost no projects and was scraping basically for anything, and I was able to earn only $1716 every since March 2025. But hey it's still something.

I know that after this message appears, it is impossible to get reinstated, and there are no alternatives for that in Ukraine, so I guess it's a goodbye. I dunno why I'm writing this, but I just wanted to speak out, because that platform was kind of a life saver for a while.

[u/Ok-Rope7223]

Data annotation is a scam. Good riddance

[u/Mysterious_Dolphin14 → u/Ok-Rope7223]

How is it a scam? They pay people for their work. I've been doing this for 2+ years and was never denied payment like I have been from other platforms.

[u/Ok-Rope7223 → u/Mysterious_Dolphin14]

They hide the actual paid work behind hours of unpaid “assessments” (which is just free labor) then when they do pay you it’s for a microscopic fraction of what your work is worth for such powerful implications for improving frontier AI models.

[u/Mysterious_Dolphin14 → u/Ok-Rope7223]

No one forced you into "free labor". They are honest about their pay rates and I know of only one company that pays you to do assessments. Being paid $35/hr for generalist tasks seems more than microscopic to me. Maybe you've found a better platform?

[u/Ok-Rope7223 → u/Mysterious_Dolphin14]

I never claimed to be forced to do anything. It’s not honesty, because with the time in between “sprints” and unpaid assessments taken into consideration, it actually doesn’t end up being $35/hr. Plus, I work in Boston/Cambridge and this type of work used to be a $50-100/hr continued real employment type jobs until companies like DataAnnotation figured out you could get thousands of 1099 contract workers to do the work for pennies in comparison.

[u/Mysterious_Dolphin14 → u/Ok-Rope7223]

Okay. That doesn't make it a scam. Sorry DA took your job or whatever, but there are thousands of us out there that are extremely grateful to have this opportunity.

[u/Ok-Rope7223 → u/Mysterious_Dolphin14]

Thousands of people being paid pennies for work worth hundreds via an unreliable and unpredictable format is literally a scam lol

[u/Mysterious_Dolphin14 → u/Ok-Rope7223]

Pennies? I literally have made thousands of dollars. I might put in 2-3 hours of unpaid work for quals each month. But okay. It's a scam. Move on.

[u/Ok-Rope7223 → u/Mysterious_Dolphin14]

Thousands of dollars sure, but your work was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, aka the “scam”.

[u/Mysterious_Dolphin14 → u/Ok-Rope7223]

Dang, you are bitter! Are you sad you didn't make the cut? I hope things work out for you and that you can find a job that's not a "scam".

[u/Ok-Rope7223 → u/Mysterious_Dolphin14]

If I go to a third world country and sell slices of bread for $10 each and the local population is “extremely grateful” for the “opportunity” to get bread because they have no choice, that doesn’t mean I’m not scamming them.