this service always made me feel uncomfortable, even the origin of the name “mechanical turk”… an illusion of automation meant to fool others, but really just the hidden labor of a foreigner
You're technically not wrong, but from your tone and wording I think you have a misconception about the machine, or are trying to induce such a misconception in others, to inspire others to take offense at the premise. There was never a Turkish person hidden inside the Mechanical Turk. The "foreigners" inside were a variety of chess masters from Germany, Austrian, French and the UK. Not the oppressed immigrants a modern reader might imagine when speaking of Turks and unspecified foreigners. And I suspect the chessmaster operators of the original Mechanical Turk were not remotely representative of the demographics of modern Amazon MT users. A Frenchman participating in a scheme to bamboozle some Austrian princes is not exactly something worth getting bent out of shape over.
(Furthermore I think in at least some of the cases, the chessmasters were operating the machine in their home country and weren't foreigners at all.)
The name was meant to inspire dread in those playing against it, much like how you know shit has gotten real when you have to fight robot Hitler in an American game.
The name “mechanical turk” comes from a fake chess-playing machine that hid a person inside of it, whom actually operated said machine. So I think the name is quite appropriate for this service.
> Why would it be uncomfortable? Those hidden inside the (original) machine were not exploited by the machine owner
Do you have a source for that assertion? As far as I can tell, several of the chess players known to have operated the Turk had substance abuse (chiefly alcoholism), health, and money problems (the words 'debt', 'penniless', and 'destitute' come up a few times). While not proof of abuse, it does suggest a strategy of recruiting the vulnerable.
In late 1700 and early 1800 Europe being a heavy drinker, having some kind of health issue and/or being penniless were the norm for most of the population. If performing a task because of those issues means being exploited then we must assume that almost everyone in Europe at those times were exploited in one way or another.
I understand what you mean if we judge it from modern western standards, but I don’t agree if we judge it by the standards of that era.
