Prolific

Prolific gets the highest marks out of all the study research companies out there in my opinion. Now, let me tell you why!

At Prolific you can take their studies from your smartphone, tablet, laptop, or desktop computer. And each study pays well, based by a set hourly wage, but the only cash out offered at this point in time is through you having a verified PayPal account. They do not offer gift cards. They pay in GBP, but through PayPal you can change the currency to USD, or whatever currency you prefer.

Prolific is based in oxford, United Kingdom and was founded in 2014 by Ekaterina Damer and Phelim Bradley. Their studies are professional focused, and most studies require you to use your intelligence, and think.

Prolific offers surveys, studies, and even games for scientific research, new products, and public opinion based studies about the government, discrimination, etc. They're not your average survey company. And you'll only be kicked out of a study if you fail their attention checks.

At Prolific you can cash out immediately with whatever earnings you have aquired at any time. And you'll receive your money within just a few hours.

I applied to sign up, got on the waiting list, and after a couple weeks they sent me an email saying I can register. I did, filled out the questionnaire, made a username and password, and uploaded a passport photo and a selfie to verify who I was.

Within seconds of clicking "upload" I was rejected with the message "We can't verify your ID. Sorry, but we weren't able to verify you against the identification you used and are therefore unable to offer you a place as a participant on Prolific. Considering the ID verification was rejected within a few seconds, obviously a machine doing the verifying. Anyone with eyes would be able to verify a person is the same in two photos, so the only reason it would have to reject me is that it is unable to identify the facial features in the photo.

There is a myriad of research that shows that machine identification programs significantly discriminate against nonwhites and are unable to recognize facial features on darker skin. I belong to this minority and feel that I have been discriminated against. This company is relying on a machine algorithm that cannot identify dark skinned facial features enough to match a US passport and a selfie taken for ID purposes, consequently cheating a substantial portion of people out of jobs.

I emailed them about the incident and they simply replied informing me that my account has failed one or more of the automated checks (ID verification) and that they can't give me any further information about the specifics of these checks and won't be able to reverse the decision.

They just shut me down. In applying to them, I gave up a lot of personal information and after a wait, they said all I had to do was verify my ID and I'd be on board. Within seconds of uploading my ID, I was auto-rejected. I feel cheated somehow, as if I were scammed. Either way, something is definitely wrong if they can string someone on so long only to let a machine auto reject someone based on appearance.

A survey site that pretends to care about privacy, and is unnecessarily strict and vague about banning/allowing users.

I wrote "thank you" at the end of every survey I did on prolific - and meant it. I did over 130 surveys, and prolific has to focus on one bad one. Or maybe it was several bad ones and they won't do anything until you finish 100+ bad surveys - who knows. Either way, I'm now permabanned.

1. First off, to even be able to do surveys: This is a survey site - it should not require a front and back picture of your ID, as well as multiple pictures of your face in order to be granted access to this site and get paid less than minimum wage to do surveys. This is as much or more than you have to do for a freaking full time job FFS, when the pictures actually go through and work. I had to spend at least 30 friggin minutes taking a bazillion pictures just to be able to get to take low paying surveys. All you should have to do is link paypal for the payment. That is it.

2. I had been doing studies and cashed out several times on this website using paypal over the course of 2 months or so. One day, I realized I hadn't received any payments in about a week, even though I had been doing surveys every day religiously. I just happened to go to my account page while logged in and realized my account was on hold; I never got an email. I sent prolific a very concise and polite email asking why, how long, and if there was anything I could do about "the hold". The very next day, I get an email from them saying I am permabanned with a huge copy pasta of their Terms and Conditions. I have had a few surveys rejected before, but a few out of 133 couldn't be that bad... right?

3. All I can do now is click "Delete account" now when I log in. It never actually deletes, because despite Prolific's pretense of caring about information privacy by telling you not to give out your private information when doing surveys, Prolific actually keeps your account and all your info associated with it - whether it's on hold or not. That way they can be unnecessarily hard-assed about making sure you and any abomination remotely resembling you ever signs up again, even if they mess up and banned you unjustly. How dare you think about making 30 cents from a 15 minute survey, amidst a pandemic no less! What a horrid human being... how dare you try to survive in hard times by earning every little bit that helps from being honest in surveys as you were told to do...

C'mon prolific... you're better than this... WE'RE better than this. I wanted to help myself and my family without being hassled for once. That's all.