Auditors are the worst part of the Humanatic experience. They review every call you process and then penalize you for whatever they deem a mistake. For every ‘mistake,’ they deduct twice the sum of what you were supposed to earn on that call. Yes, you read that correctly — twice as much as you were supposed to make can be (and often is) arbitrarily deducted from your earnings at any time. I do not think this is even legal.

On the top of that, they demand high-quality work, and you are supposed to stay inside the 95% accuracy rate window or lose access to certain categories.

Oops indeed

I imagine quite a few workers give up before they even manage to reach the payout limit. I certainly came close to it more than once, and it makes me wonder how many free hours of work have Call Box snatched from their Humanatic workers thanks to these abusive policies.

So why do the workers keep toiling?

Call Box proudly states that over 85,000 call reviewers work on their Humanic platform. They also say that they have paid out close to $7,000,000 so far.

Simple math will tell you that based on these numbers each of the 85,000 workers on average received about $80 in total earnings. So why do people keep working for such a miserable pay?

Humanatic accepts international workers. Perhaps many of them reside in the countries where one dollar goes a long way? Although this would be possible, it is also highly unlikely since the type of work calls for English proficiency and a good Internet connection. Not many of the people living in underdeveloped countries have that.

An alternative explanation has a lot to do with gaming and addiction psychology. Working for Humanatic is like being caught in a twisted net of gaming allure combined with compliance techniques. Call Box used these tools to create a platform that effectively manipulates and turns those who signup into semi-willing slaves.

Irrational escalation of commitment

The Humanatic system is a textbook example of for-profit abuse of social psychology findings. Call Box’s business model would make even the Joker proud, for it’s an ingenious device designed to serve as an unlimited source of free or grotesquely cheap work. So how do they do it?

Escalation of commitment is a well know phenomenon in social psychology that could explain the success of the Call Box’s slave-work platform. Namely, the sunk cost fallacy is a form of irrational escalation of commitment leading to bad decisions because people hope they will recover the losses despite clear evidence that their course of action will never bring the desired results.

Once the workers get lured into the Humanatic scheme with promises of an easy online job, it gets harder and harder for them to walk away after each unpaid hour of work they have already invested. Thanks to the previously mentioned payout limit, they have to put in a lot of effort before getting a few dollars back. Consequently, they fall prey to the sunk cost fallacy and continue to work to recover at least some of the losses.

Many management, marketing, and UX courses also include a lesson or two on the prospect theory and loss aversion — two of the Call Box’s favorite social psychology tools. These findings revealed the tendency of the human brain to stay on the losing track in hope of uncertain and even unlikely future gains that are erroneously preferred to accepting any certain losses in the present, regardless of the negative long-term consequences of such decisions.

This is what gambling business and addiction to it are based on and this can also explain why so many workers stay with Humanatic even after they realize how poorly they are being paid and despite the unfair monetary deductions they are continuously subjected to during the audits.

Whichever decision the workers/players end up making, the house always wins. If they stop participating before reaching the $10 payout limit, Humanatic keeps all the time and work they’ve already invested for free, and if they decide to put in the hours needed to receive at least $10 in return, Humanatic still gets work done at an obscenely cheap rate.

In short, Call Box’s Humanatic is a scam and should never be allowed to run as a legitimate multi-million dollar business.

How low can they go?

The $10 dollar payoff limit, however, is only the beginning of the sleazy game Call Box plays with their Humanatic workers. Much like the Nigerian email scammers, they try to keep their victims playing for as long as they can, and they use a whole arsenal of gaming tools for the purpose.

Their user interface even looks like a game where you progress through ever higher levels and earn random awards, such as virtual gems.