• ironhydroxide@sh.itjust.works
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    4 months ago

    Read the first paragraphs of the article (till the paywall), still have no clue what a “turk” is.

    Maybe I’m just dense.

    • Evilcoleslaw@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Amazon Mechanical Turk is a service where people can do simple tasks for small amounts of money. Usually things you would expect to be automated, especially in this day and age. I did it for a bit about a decade or so ago. Things like small amounts of proofreading, transcription, etc.

      The name is a reference to a hoax device made in the late 1700s that was supposedly a chess playing automaton. In actuality it was operated by a person hiding within. It was nicknamed the Mechanical Turk because it had a model of the head and torso of a person dressed in Ottoman robes, etc.