Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service now on life support as it stops accepting new users

Amazon has decided to halt new users from joining its Mechanical Turk service, signaling the likely end of the pioneering crowdsourcing platform. Launched in 2005, Mechanical Turk was one of the first platforms to facilitate human-based tasks on the internet, paving the way for modern gig economies and microtask markets. This move underscores a shift in Amazon's focus, likely towards more profitable and scalable cloud services, while signaling the waning relevance of early internet innovations.