Am I the only one experiencing this?

Back in August of 2020, MTurk started going down and becoming inaccessible to me from 11am-3pm EST time. I would get the 'Website Unavailable' error message from those hours. Couldn't access my dashboard, any MTurk-related extensions, etc. The weird is, I could turn on a VPN via my desktop or turn mobile data on my phone and MTurk was accessible as usual. Turn them off during those hours, the same error message. I messaged support and we exchanged nearly 30 messages over the course of a month and they never resolved anything. The issue seemed to fix itself after about 1 month.

Well, the issue is back for me at the moment. MTurk goes down like clockwork for me; about 11am and lasts until about 1pm or so. In between those 2 hours, MTurk will briefly start working again, but for no more than 3-5 minutes. I have to know, as customer support makes me feel like I'm going insane: is anyone else experiencing this?

 

Where do you live? Might help to reach out to your service provider. Perhaps there is something on their end they are doing between those times that limits a range of IP traffic.

 

I'm in Florida. When I turn on my VPN, it puts my IP address in New York, which eliminates the error. MTurk support were suggesting I simply ignore the issue and complete HITs using the VPN despite how many Requesters screen for them. The VPN also significantly slows my system, so it's a no go.

I actually did reach out to my ISP when the issue originally happened and tried to have them change my IP address. They refused, but I can't remember why. I did manage to switch my DNS server, but that didn't resolve it.

 

Interesting. I'm not tech savvy enough to know what else it could be.

I wonder what pinging their sever would look like during one of these episodes for you.

If the outage is still consistent, perhaps if you had access to another internet connection, it could confirm if the issue lies with your ISP, or Mturk. For example, if you could go to the Library and work from there one afternoon, that may be a big enough separation.

FWIW, I live in NE Florida and have not experienced any issues. I am on AT&TT.

 

I could give the whole public wi-fi thing a try, but I think it'd be just like being able to access MTurk through my phones mobile data. I think it'd work, which is discouraging because we're in the same boat: I'm also not super tech savvy myself.

I got advice through these forums when it happened initially and a few people suggested the DNS server switch. People on Reddit are telling me the same thing, too. It didn't resolve it, but maybe I did it incorrectly.

Customer support is 'looking into it', but I think that statement speaks for itself. They were looking into it for almost 2 weeks the first time and their only response for 5-6 straight emails was: 'the investigation is still ongoing, we'll let you know when we've found a solution'.

 

You are going to end up screwing yourself if you keep using the VPN. Crowdresearch actively blocks workers using vpn by their worker ID and offers it as an upcharge to researchers, so you will lose out on a lot of surveys. They also published some garbage research saying all workers on VPN are scammers, not people trying to remain private which I have seen referenced in many non-crowdreserch hosted studies both on prolific and mturk.

If you have Tmobile, you might be in a 5g area. You can "try" their 5g hotspot in home internet for free for 30 days. It works ok, not the best for streaming video but good enough for internet at $50 a month after.
It is defiantly your ISP, you should dump them.

 

No worries, I refuse to use a VPN and I'm a bit surprised customer support suggested I do. No chance I'm risking my CR Research Group #1 qual.

Aside from that, I'm also beginning to believe it's my ISP. I'll have to look into different providers, unfortunately.