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Appen China Platform (aka Appen 9): Should You Opt In or Out?
Appen China Platform (aka...
From mid-2020, Appen raters from all over the world reported being invited by email to opt in for the new Appen China platform known as Appen 9. By accepting the invitation to create an Appen 9 account, the home-based agents are supposedly exposed to a wider variety of projects, as they will also have access to the ones that are available exclusively through the Chinese platform.
As everything comes at a price, opting in to Appen China involves accepting terms and conditions that many raters report as shady and suspicious. And that raises some questions: Is it worth opting in to Appen China and creating an account with Appen 9? What are the pros and the cons? Will your personal information be shared with the Chinese government? These are the things that this article will look into and try to unveil.
If you are interested in joining Appen, make sure to read our post on how to work from home with Appen in 7 steps.
Appen China is the name by which Appen refers to its Chinese operation. It can allude to the platform where jobs are made available, which can also be called Appen 9 or Matrix Go by Appen, or the website launched after the opening of Appen’s office in Beijing.
The fully translated Chinese site aims to help the company connect with prospects and clients in China, a hot market for global AI development and machine learning solutions. The Appen 9 platform, on the other hand, serves as a hub to connect crowd workers with Appen projects for Chinese clients.
The answer to this question depends on which concept of safety we are talking about.
If you’re concerned about the legitimacy of Appen China and whether you’ll get paid for your services, don’t worry. As the Chinese branch of Appen, this is a legit and established company whose expansion has been funded by multiple prominent investors.
However, if your concern is about whether your personal information will be kept safe with Appen China and your online privacy protected, then the answer is way trickier. Multiple Appen raters have reported being requested to install security apps that can only be removed by formatting the computer. There are suspicions that this type of software could be used to monitor all user’s activity on their PC. People also report that their computer become unstable after installing the required software.
All foreign entities operating within China are subject to its cybersecurity system. According to the China Law Blog by international law firm Harris Bricken, “This system will apply to foreign owned companies in China on the same basis as to all Chinese persons, entities or individuals. No information contained on any server located within China will be exempted from the government’s full coverage program. No communication from or to China will be exempted…. Any and all data will be available and open to the Chinese government.”
Most of the online jobs that are available through Appen 9 are microtasks such as transcription or data labeling projects. An example of a project is Aragorn, among many others.
There are many types of crowd projects that can be available for raters who opt in, but keep in mind that they will require you to install client's apps on your computer, which can only be uninstalled by re-installing your PC.
In most countries, the average rate of pay for transcription projects on Appen 9 is around $15 per hour of audio transcribed.
At first, this may look like a decent rate. However, the average time it takes to transcribe one hour of audio is at least 5 hours, so the actual rate you will make is less than $3/hour. This is way below the rate for most projects that are available through Appen Connect. It is also far below the average salary paid by most transcription companies.
For now, the sentiment about Appen China projects is very negative. This can be easily concluded from several user reports on multiple online forums and Facebook groups.
That said, below are some reasons why you should consider opting in or out of Appen 9 projects by Appen China: