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Comment by adamselby | Hacker News Reader

The very first paragraph of "Apple Developer Enterprise Program License Agreement":

"Your company, organization or educational institution would like to use the Apple Software (as defined below) to develop one or more Internal Use Applications (as defined below) for Apple- branded products running iOS, watchOS, tvOS, and/or macOS, and to deploy these Applications only for internal use within Your company, organization or educational institution or for limited use as expressly set forth herein."

https://developer.apple.com/terms/ → Apple Developer Enterprise Program License Agreement

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While I've seen other potentially-applicable sections quoted elsewhere, a traffic-research app used by paid contractors of a company would seem to meet both the "Internal Use Application" definition, and the "Permitted Users" definition.

Yes, I'm sure they're all filing Form 1099.

Paying a random consumer $20 does not make them a contractor. Do you think they all got 1099s?

1099s are only required if more than $600 is paid in a year.

You are a "contractor" if you are providing services under a contract. A contract exists whenever there is a definitive agreement to exchange valuable considerations – even in the absence of a written, signed contract.

But the sign-up for these apps might have included an explicit "signing" phase! (It's even possible that FB/Google asked for participants' SSNs, just in case any payments went over $600.)

Apply some common sense here. A contractor charges money for their time. $20/mth is what I’ve read they were paid. That means anything more than 2 hours of work is breaking minimum wage laws.

They're not even doing work for hire. They're selling rights to data, likely non-exclusive.

And it could easily be less than 2 hours of effort per month to install/update the app and answer occasional questionnaires. But even if, outlandishly, a minimum wage violation, if they’re being paid under a contract, they’re ‘contractors’.

(And if they’re under any sort of confidentiality agreement or other conditions on their app usage, they fit under the Apple terms’ concepts of “Permitted Users” and “Internal Use” even better.)

They're selling rights to data. They're not producing work or materials for hire. Anywhere I or anyone else has made this point you haven't responded.

Further everyone's points about a form 1099 and how paying consumers doesn't make them a contractor, I also want to add that people as young as 13 were being targeted by these programs. Everyone under 18 is unable to sign a contract and therefore can't be a contractor, anyway.

Incorrect. People under 18 can enter into a contract with parental permission.

Further, some stories have reported that Facebook says they acquired such parental permission for the minor participants.

Do you have a source for these stories you keep reporting happened? Because I haven't seen a single link supporting this narrative.

Additionally, the minimum age for non-agricultural workers is 14 anyway, so even then they're in the wrong and can't legally hire 13-year olds as contractors or employees. There's also several other rules in the FLSA pertaining to workers under 18 including minimum wage. I have a sneaky suspicion $20 per whatever period it is (unless said period is a few hours) is going to be under that wage.

Not to mention there's a whole lot more can of worms being opened specifically around minimum wage and recording hours that I highly doubt either Facebook or Google were actively managing.

They're not even producing goods or services for Google. They're selling access to data. They're selling rights.

I've never seen that relationship result in anyone being called a contractor and I've signed too many film contracts. I don't know where OP is getting this notion.

A contractor can be paid for piecework: compare Mechanical Turk. (And, the actual labor required to install the app, and answer any questionnaires, was probably on the order of "minutes" rather than "hours" – and thus compensated at far above "minimum wage".)

Here you can see a VentureBeat reporter – and one who is actually a member of the California State Bar of Attorneys – raise some of the same questions as I have:

https://venturebeat.com/2019/01/31/the-odd-reason-apple-kill...

Late in this article, you can see Facebook's statement that all minors who participated did so with signed parental consent forms:

https://gizmodo.com/facebook-is-paying-teens-to-install-a-re...

Facebook's statement: "Key facts about this market research program are being ignored. Despite early reports, there was nothing ‘secret’ about this; it was literally called the Facebook Research App. It wasn’t ‘spying’ as all of the people who signed up to participate went through a clear on-boarding process asking for their permission and were paid to participate. Finally, less than 5 percent of the people who chose to participate in this market research program were teens. All of them with signed parental consent forms."

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