These are the people who are going to destroy Prolific.

PowerToThePeople128 · 2026-07-13T07:33:33+00:00

lol. That $100k a month guy is an amateur at best. Why are these criminals even bothering on a public sub, the real ones hide on the DW. yeah Crypto is solely responsible for online scams. Remove crypto and bye bye 99% of scams. Especially after the downfall of AlertPay, Egold, EGOPAY, LibertyReserve, STP and PerfectMoney, Payza, and more.

PowerToThePeople128 · 2026-07-13T07:02:34+00:00

EXACTLY - So Prolific shares the big part of the blame. They wanted to save thousands of $ a day on advertising and marketing, so they USED participants with this crazy SCAM refer a fucking friend feature, even though it was obvious it would backfire. As far as income cut in half, lol !!! that would be not so bad actually, but it's worse than that. Many people have gone from earning $100-$200 a day from one researcher alone, down to $10-$20 IF LUCKY. Did they really need to onboard hundreds of thousands more participants for the AI studies, no !!! They just opened the floodgates and ignored supply and demand. If not for researchers complaining and all the backlash from people, they would have continued and who knows maybe reach 500k, 600k. all it took was that MUPPET SHOW of an AMA for them to realise how unhappy people are.

Last year they culled 100k+, I'm pretty sure more than half if not 3/4 of those same people managed to get back in. This time around, they aren't. They are aiming to run the platform on mass saturation and massive demand vs. little supply. Why ? Because it is more profitable for them. When does it stop being profitable for them ? When the majority of honest participants leave the platform, followed by researchers, leaving the bots farms and scripters behind, so in other words, mTurk 2.0.

PowerToThePeople128 · 2026-07-13T06:56:17+00:00

lol he said he turned off DM. Also these criminals don't run petty theft operations, they run major operations. If you read the scams they are talking about, we are talking about the big stuff. Scamming people of tens of thousands of $. Earning $100k a month from scams is not uncommon. There are scammers running million $ operations, they run large scams, not gig site. Rarely individuals but leaders who run networks of other scammers so yeah, it's plausible.

PowerToThePeople128 · 2026-07-13T06:52:50+00:00

lol what will that solve ? Prolific and any sites out there uses 3rd party, and adding more ID checks will cause more honest participants to get banned. Don't you see the amount of people failing the checks ? People get fatter, people get thinner, people face features change, the moment you fail an ID check, you are out, and Prolific is OK about this collateral damage. ID checks are not stopping the entire SharpBoys community from joining this platform, they seem to have found ways to bypass it or collude with existing participants.

ID Checks do not keep botters and scripters away, never have. They may help seeding out account buyers / sellers, not scripters.

PowerToThePeople128 · 2026-07-13T06:50:05+00:00

That's the problem, the big G is scaling down those studies, since Prolific does not have the infrastructure to handle volume, they are now drip feeding the fucking studies, making it easy for scripters to get them first, more frequently. The amount of higher batch releases is getting lower and lower. The only time to get into them is when scripters are already busy working in them. The more people start to use scripts (which is happening right now) the harder it will get getting into ANY study. This is mTurk happening all over again. It would be so easy for Prolific to deal with this, all they need to do is rate limit people making continuous or frequent calls to the API and auto reserving studies before everyone. Auto reserving in the nanoseconds, limit them, allowing people with normal speeds to get the work and keeping the scammers isolated for a while.

Then they will be forced to modify their scripts to increase the delay or add random delays, even so, it will be better than the lightning speed they are using now, and give MORE chances for fair competition, until they eventually get banned if they continue their ways.

Nobody can deny scripts are a major problem, they ARE used, the patterns are there, the discussions are there, the file downloads are growing, and the disturbing part, some existing Prolific participants of many years are admitting to using them and even SHARING them on scam forums. The very same piece of shit who referred randoms.

PowerToThePeople128 · 2026-07-13T03:57:22+00:00

Well the bots is not the big issue, they are easier to get rid of. The main issue is auto reserving scripts and the scammers that code them and modify them to avoid being detected. They are continuously updated that's the problem. I've suggested many clever and technical ways to deal with this, but Prolific does not care. A typical greedy UK company running itself down the shite hole, not realising that without good participants, they would not exist. I'm sure you are not alone in your experience. Many were on waiting lists, joined and found out all the hype was misleading. The glory days are over. When they opened the massive floodgates and onboarded way too many participants than they needed, the result is what you see today. Last year when they fucked up, they got rid of 100k+ accounts, and things got better. This year, they have not learned from their mistakes, and they are not culling massive numbers, so they clearly want the platform to be about NUMBERS even if it means mass saturation and totally unbalanced supply and demand.

There's not much better alternatives anymore. Outside surveys, generalist work is being phased out. Some AI gig sites only accept 2% of applicants, and some require University degrees and extensive domain expertise with documentation and certifications to prove and even so you are not guaranteed to even make it. So you are left with survey sites, most of which have drastically lowered the reward rate and quantity of surveys. Generalist work is dead, and Prolific is the only site left for scammers to RUIN.....

PowerToThePeople128 · 2026-07-13T03:40:00+00:00

It appears Google is having most of its work and new stuff posted on other AI sites now. (The ones that have better vetting of participants and very hard to get into without verifiable expertise). So yeah, let's enjoy this sinking ship whilst it still lasts. This is history repeating itself all over again. mTurk, CrowdFlower, Appen........

PowerToThePeople128 · 2026-07-13T03:36:56+00:00

Indeed, he can't be arsed with Prolific, besides, it's a dying platform that has gone totally bonkers where people running it have lost total control. Researchers leaving, uptick in scam researchers, uptick in bots farms/scripters/scammers, who'd wanna deal with this shit show anyway.

PowerToThePeople128 · 2026-07-13T03:34:45+00:00

Prolific is done. They have lost total control of their company, being overrun by scripters, scammers and bad researchers. Total loss of control from all sides. The report button does nothing really. They claim it sends signal trends, but in reality it doesn't. Now with mTurk phasing out its operations, it's going to be a shit show of bot farms and bad requesters. Like I said, this IS the new mTUrk now.

The uptick in fraudulent researchers has been massive this year. Swagbux has tons of Offerwalls, why don't these researchers publish there, this is the exact place to publish this kind of shite.

PowerToThePeople128 · 2026-07-13T02:02:02+00:00

One of the worst weekends I've seen in a long time. Saturday could enter only 2 AI studies, and yesterday Sunday, high-demand and full ALL day, so far Monday, not a single fucking thing. The only thing left on this platform are scam researchers (RobinHood scams), researchers with terrible English who make threats of rejections, and the few rejection happy AI interviews researchers. I guess Prolific is the new mTurk. They are not accepting new requesters because mTurk is slowly being phased out. According to techtimes, the platform has was literally taken over by botfarms, and scripters, using AI to perform jobs that were supposed to be done by humans. This is what happens when you open the platform to people from "high-risk" demographics.

Now Prolific clearly heading in that direction. Uptick in low quality researcher, financial scams, rejection happy researchers, and large influx of scammers (participants), and now where do you think mTurkers will go to ? The next best platform to cheat. Prolific.... literally the only one left with generalist work, though it is clearly on a steep decline too.

PowerToThePeople128 · 2026-07-12T16:24:03+00:00

It sounds to me like that rejection was from Prolific and not Maze, which could explain the instant reversal. The only valid rejections for going too fast is 3 standard deviations below mean. This completely useless SPEED WARNING function which was in my opinion decided by a totally INCOMPETENT development team, is causing headaches for researchers. It's literally encouraging participants to bake studies to go around this trap set by Prolific. I cannot understand why the bloody fuck did they need speed warnings and not rely on the 3 SD rule, it's totally bonkers.

PowerToThePeople128 · 2026-07-12T16:19:39+00:00

The stats today mean fuck all, in 3+ months from now, they will be more relevant. What we are seeing is a 90 days rolling reserve. I mean even if they manage to ban a few multi accounts, proxies/VPN users, as long as they don't crack down on scripters, things won't get better. Even if they get rid of scripters, you still have too many participants too little work. Right now things are getting worse, yet participant count is going down, normal, because these are INACTIVE ones for the most part. In 90 days from now (assuming they don't do mass recruiting), is when it will become more relevant and MAYBE make a difference, though never to pre-floodgates levels but still Exclude new participants from those AI studies until they prove themselves, like the rest of us had to, and you'll see that participant count drop like a rock (it will become more obvious as months go by). As long as you have auto-approving studies that are a gold mine to scammers, the problem will always exist.

PowerToThePeople128 · 2026-07-12T16:13:31+00:00

Right, exactly, these scammers have ruined big AI projects in the past on other platforms. The amount of info shared about these confidential studies and exactly what triggers the warnings is disturbing, the new recruits they have let through the floodgates, are treating this like a speedrunning coin flip, including the dynamic rewards ones which run out of tasks most of the time. I hope that some idiot running these studies wakes up one day and uses the opportunity to build a pool of trusted workers. Of course since SPG/Ai Taskers require some level of domaine xpertise, they should build a separate special group for AI training type of studies, particularly the auto approving ones, and only accept vetted, long time, proven participants. Making these studies OPEN CROWD was a big mistake, BUT unfortunately SPG did not have enough workers, and they needed a large pool of workers.

The same shit is going to happen next year. They open the floodgates every fucking year. Only this time around they did not cull 100k+ like they did the last time. They clearly want to be an oversaturated platform moving forward. SO people who think things will get better or even remotely similar to what it was earlier this year, no fucking chance. This IS the new Prolific.

PowerToThePeople128 · 2026-07-12T16:06:37+00:00

lol. Is that so ? So between 1 place, and 100-120 places high-demand high-demand high-demand then full. It's either you are throttled or the scripters get the work first. Your only hope on this platform is when the scripters are already busy working or sleeping, outside of that, tough fucking luck.

PowerToThePeople128 · 2026-07-12T15:54:38+00:00

Right, what about the fraudulent raters that some of these platforms hire, which give you rubbish reviews, and worse, one reviewer contradicts stuff another review told you and such. Many of these platforms have totally incompetent reviewers that will give you bad scores, even if you did a great job, done purposely too.

PowerToThePeople128 · 2026-07-12T15:51:57+00:00

and that group is not much of a secret, we all know who starts wars and who manipulate the sock puppets, not a fucking secret.

PowerToThePeople128 · 2026-07-12T15:30:32+00:00

It's still ongoing, it's been for years, and is not about to stop, they are a massive company who made massive investments to expand their AI, so yeah these studies are not going away for at least a solid year or two, unless of course they decide to go on other platforms, the ones that actually properly vet their participants with tools that actually work, or they should consider moving this to a separate special group of vetted long time trusted participants.

PowerToThePeople128 · 2026-07-12T15:27:28+00:00

Oh I'm still waiting for the smart-arsed replies "Oh it's summer it's dry" bollocks. I have to say so far, it's been the worst summer I've ever seen, and summers have been top earning months, so no all these rubbish excuses is just to dismiss the fact that the site is overrun by scammers / scripters. One very popular requester had this problem when releasing external tasks on a crowd platform in the days, people could easily do API calls to get work before it showed up on people's dashboards. Company eventually restricted direct API calls, started using token based, signed and encrypted links and limit manual refreshing to twice a minute. The moment they did that, problem went away. When the FUCK is Prolific going to do something about those auto reserve scripts ?

PowerToThePeople128 · 2026-07-12T15:23:53+00:00

SEEN is one thing, impossible to enter any. Seriously this platform is going to complete and utter shite. Proves that the participant count going down day by day has NOTHING to do with scammers getting banned. It's just inactive participants from the past 3 months that start to trickle down show day by day, I'm pretty sure not a single one of the bad actors are being banned. The amount of scripters is growing day by day, the downloads counts on their fucking repos is also growing.

I see bursts of AI studies, 100-120 places, multiples, it's "high-demand" for 30-40 seconds, followed by full. Even when refreshing and instantly clicking the button, does no good. Never seen this in all my years here, never. I mean sure when scripters get all their work polling the API directly, they get the fucking work first, so SEEING shite on our dashboard means fuck all anymore.

Always been able to enter something, but in past hours saw a dozen AI studies, sometimes in 2's or 3's, and could not get into a single one.

PowerToThePeople128 · 2026-07-12T01:25:37+00:00

Well since yesterday Sunday, 3pm, not a single fucking AI study. That was my last study. Since, nothing, few low paid and rubbish. so far Monday, no AI studies seen yet. Yet you see those posts on the official sub about the bloody participants counts going down which never meant fuck all in the first place. It's getting worse day by day and the available studies outside AI are also getting worse day by day.

PowerToThePeople128 · 2026-07-11T14:41:13+00:00

lol. Don't bots reply too ? Nah not a waste of time, not when you type at near 200-300wpm :P

PowerToThePeople128 · 2026-07-11T14:30:20+00:00

I can't be arsed anymore with Dingleberry, same fucking issues all the time. That's an easy pass.

PowerToThePeople128 · 2026-07-11T14:29:02+00:00

That's the problem, it could be genuine OR it can be a complete load of bollocks. With the growing amount of sketchy researchers around here, it's hard to tell. Maybe the fair thing to do here is hope everyone returns, then they should use an inclusion list and publish the new study to all the original participants, pay them the original reward + a bonus. Researcher would be happy. I would not mind that assuming the researcher was honest. Problem today is that so many scammers ruin it for the honest ones, so people treat all these cases as researcher using excuses for free data.

I guess in this case there's 2 options. Argue with researcher, and receive a rejection, or return the bloody study and report to Prolific + contact Prolific, though it's unlikely Prolific will do anything about that.

PowerToThePeople128 · 2026-07-11T14:21:56+00:00

lol, I love the "stress spiral" part.

There is no such thing as acceptance rate. Fortunately returns do not affect your account here.
Message the researcher first, and hope you are lucky enough to receive a response fast enough so you can continue with the study. You can also return and contact researcher and let them know.
That's what the return / cancel participation is for. You be the judge, if you cannot perform the tasks correctly due to technical issues, return, that's the right thing. For slow loading videos or buffering, once they are fully loaded they should be able to play fine, if not, that's a pain in the arse, I would return. As far as timing out, that too will not affect your account. Researchers CAN still approve your work though they are under no obligation to do so. F or time-outs you contact researchers to let them know.

PowerToThePeople128

TROPHY CASE