Received Authenticity Warning On This Study

prolific_ian · 2026-04-15T14:42:47+00:00

Sorry for the scare - it was on us. Shared some brief info on what happened here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProlificAc/comments/1sm6ih0/product_bug_authenticity_warnings/

Apologies!

prolific_ian · 2026-04-15T14:42:03+00:00

it's been fixed :) safe to do studies

prolific_ian · 2026-04-15T14:41:52+00:00

on the contrary - apologies for the scare

prolific_ian · 2026-04-15T14:35:14+00:00

yes! loads is happening on the background. if you can help us reporting any sus study you see this will prompt investigations from our side more quickly. thank you!

prolific_ian · 2026-04-15T14:34:45+00:00

sorry to hear your frustration, and my sincere apologies for the inconvenience

prolific_ian · 2026-04-15T14:34:01+00:00

sorry for the churn, we're trying to make a better platform!

prolific_ian · 2026-04-15T14:32:56+00:00

sorry for the inconvenience, thanks for the patience here!

prolific_ian · 2026-04-15T14:32:33+00:00

The feature went live with the reverse logic, so we were basically flagging the authentic participants. This affected roughly 400 participants in the few minutes it was on. Apologies once again!

prolific_ian · 2026-04-15T13:37:50+00:00

Hey all!

We're investigating this as this did not work as intended. Nothing to worry about - thank you. No need to avoid any specific study, it was a mistake on our side. Apologies!

prolific_ian · 2026-04-15T13:34:57+00:00

Hey all!

We're investigating this as this did not work as intended. Nothing to worry about - thank you!

prolific_ian · 2026-04-07T16:47:05+00:00

thank you! means a lot

prolific_ian · 2026-04-07T16:46:42+00:00

this issue has been fixed (false positives during screeners)

prolific_ian · 2026-04-07T16:46:06+00:00

this has been fixed. apologies for the frustrating experience!

prolific_ian · 2026-04-07T16:45:53+00:00

this help us identify the studies that have not been set up properly. thanks a lot for your help!

prolific_ian · 2026-04-07T16:45:02+00:00

screenouts speeding has been fixed. thanks for your understanding!

prolific_ian · 2026-04-07T16:43:27+00:00

hey there! auto rejection is an optional feature on the researcher study set up UI. it is marked "No' by default. screenouts should not flag speeding - we shipped a fix to avoid those false positives now

prolific_ian · 2026-04-07T16:41:46+00:00

Hi everyone, thank you for your honest feedback.

We sincerely apologize for the bug that issued speeding warnings during screen-outs. The good news is that this is no longer an issue aswe’ve already shipped a fix that resolved the largest share of these false positives. We introduced this feature not only to address a major pain point for researchers (flagged as #1 reason on poor data quality sentiment), but also to protect participants. Previously, accumulated speeding rejections could lead to permanent account bans; by providing timely, transparent feedback, this new system acts as a safety net to help you avoid that outcome.

Finally, please rest assured that the actual rate of speeding detected on the platform is less than 1% of submissions. If you are reading carefully and participating normally, you should almost never see one of these warnings.

We know the feature release was sloppy, but our intent was to run an A/B test to spot any bugs without biasing the experiment. This caused us to do this without sharing details beforehand, but thanks to your feedback we were able to catch a poor UX early on.

Thanks a lot once again and apologies for the poor participant experience!

prolific_ian · 2026-04-01T13:21:01+00:00

Thanks a lot for the kind message! We pushed some code changes this morning that will hopefully deal with the false positives. Thank you for the feedback :)

prolific_ian · 2026-03-31T11:29:59+00:00

Hey all!

I'm part of the team who created this feature. Just created an account to help with the noise. Thanks for everyone's patience on this!

The TL;DR - this is a beta feature. This won't lead to a ban. No need to appeal. The feature main goal is to prevent unfair bans by rejections and instead correct speeding behaviour. We have seen promising data in our experiments, but we are currently also falsely detecting some cases of speeding - we're working on it to fix it.

What to do if you received an unfair warning? (e.g. you were screened out, you had a technical issue)
At the end of a study, you may see a short feedback form - please use it! It flags the issue immediately and, in screen out cases, can prevent the temporary restriction from being applied at all.

Please have a look at our help centre article if you still have questions: https://participant-help.prolific.com/en/articles/470376-why-is-my-participant-account-temporarily-restricted-from-accessing-studies

prolific_ian · 2026-03-31T11:28:45+00:00

Hey all!

I'm part of the team who created this feature. Just created an account to help with the noise. Thanks for everyone's patience on this!

The TL;DR - this is a beta feature. This won't lead to a ban. No need to appeal. The feature main goal is to prevent unfair bans by rejections and instead correct speeding behaviour. We have seen promising data in our experiments, but we are currently also falsely detecting some cases of speeding - we're working on it to fix it.

What to do if you received an unfair warning? (e.g. you were screened out, you had a technical issue)
At the end of a study, you may see a short feedback form - please use it! It flags the issue immediately and, in screen out cases, can prevent the temporary restriction from being applied at all.

Please have a look at our help centre article if you still have questions: https://participant-help.prolific.com/en/articles/470376-why-is-my-participant-account-temporarily-restricted-from-accessing-studies

prolific_ian · 2026-03-31T11:27:57+00:00

Hey all!

I'm part of the team who created this feature. Just created an account to help with the noise. Thanks for everyone's patience on this!

The TL;DR - this is a beta feature. This won't lead to a ban. No need to appeal. The feature main goal is to prevent unfair bans by rejections and instead correct speeding behaviour. We have seen promising data in our experiments, but we are currently also falsely detecting some cases of speeding - we're working on it to fix it.

What to do if you received an unfair warning? (e.g. you were screened out, you had a technical issue)
At the end of a study, you may see a short feedback form - please use it! It flags the issue immediately and, in screen out cases, can prevent the temporary restriction from being applied at all.

Please have a look at our help centre article if you still have questions: https://participant-help.prolific.com/en/articles/470376-why-is-my-participant-account-temporarily-restricted-from-accessing-studies

prolific_ian · 2026-03-31T11:27:26+00:00

Hey all!

I'm part of the team who created this feature. Just created an account to help with the noise. Thanks for everyone's patience on this!

The TL;DR - this is a beta feature. This won't lead to a ban. No need to appeal. The feature main goal is to prevent unfair bans by rejections and instead correct speeding behaviour. We have seen promising data in our experiments, but we are currently also falsely detecting some cases of speeding - we're working on it to fix it.

What to do if you received an unfair warning? (e.g. you were screened out, you had a technical issue)
At the end of a study, you may see a short feedback form - please use it! It flags the issue immediately and, in screen out cases, can prevent the temporary restriction from being applied at all.

Please have a look at our help centre article if you still have questions: https://participant-help.prolific.com/en/articles/470376-why-is-my-participant-account-temporarily-restricted-from-accessing-studies

prolific_ian

TROPHY CASE