Indian Crowdturfer
By Shibi Kiran

A University of California study into Chinese crowdsourcing sites uncovered the more seedy side of some such websites.  For a few Rupees, someone can create for you fake Facebook profiles to generate spam or a fake fan following.  Or you can pay someone to leave tens of fake positive comments on Travel and Product Review websites.

The University of California labeled this as ‘Crowdturfing’ after finding that this was a multi million dollar business employing hundreds of thoughts of people in China. The research paper, ‘Serf and Turf: Crowdtur?ng for Fun and Pro?t’ by Gang Wang, Christo Wilson, Xiaohan Zhao, Yibo Zhu, Manish Mohanlal, Haitao Zheng and Ben Y. Zhao, of the Department of Computer Science,  University of California, Santa Barbara, studies the various aspects of crowdturfing. 

Some of the big crowdturfing names in China are Zhubajie, the largest in that country, Sandaha and Weibo. And the American ones which have a small amount of Crowdturfing are: Amazon Turk, ShortTask, MinuteWorkers, MyEasyTask and Microworkers. An Indian company – Paisalive was also considered a serious enough player to get a mention in this report.

According to this American report : “Among the several crowdsourcing sites, the Indian one is Paisalive. It is a clear example of how much we have integrated with the world.  The wages given by it are low compared with the rest. The distinguishing aspect of its modus operandi is that it is email based: after the worker signs up on the website, all the interactions happen via email. It clearly shows that it is intended to enable a rural workforce where connectivity is intermittent, coupled with low bandwith.”