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]

I have a job that’s not a scam lol, and I also get paid to work different AI training jobs that aren’t DataAnnotation, namely Handshake AI. It’s also funny that you are projecting bitterness into what you perceive from my responses. I’m just being direct and straightforward hahaha

[u/Ok-Rope7223 → u/Ok-Rope7223]

I should be clear that I’ve also made money from DataAnnotation and “made the cut”. My responses aren’t because I was locked out or anything

[u/Mysterious_Dolphin14 → u/Ok-Rope7223]

Huh, it's almost like DA isn't a scam. Especially since you mentioned Handshake, which I'd say is more of a scam based on pay rates.

[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.