What is happening with all the spam jobs in design category

[spxinsane]

The feed in design category is full of the same random jobs "I need someone who can convert images to pdf perfectly" or "I have some images that needs to be edited with some objects and backgrounds removed about 20 images are to be edited perfectly" from unverified new clients with insane budgets.

I don't mind seeing one or 2 spams /day but when 9 out of 10 jobs is a spam it makes me think that the upwork staff don't care any more about freelancers.

This is sad since i am user from the days of oDesk and Elance and in the last few months this issue is getting worse and worse.

I really want to keep on working on this platform but i can't even find a a job to apply since everything in the feed is spam? How is this working for UpWork? Is it ok just to have spam jobs apper and no money flow towards the site?

Do we need to migrate to other platforms or is there going to be a resolution ?

I consider this is a real issues since if the problem isn't resolved the freelancers are going to leave the site.

And please don't respond with the "avoid scam tips". The generic staff response is just a prof that this website is slowly going down, just like freelancer[dot]com did (ther ealso after the spam waves they didnt care any more and just let the site die slowly).

[yofazza]

> upwork staff don't care any more about freelancers

It's calculated I think. The cost (effort) vs benefit don't match.

[NikolaS]

Hi Adrian,

Thank you for reaching out to us and sharing your feedback and concerns. Our teams are working to address the situation around scam and spam jobs, including higher than usual volumes of scam posts, constantly changing methods of scam accounts and gaps in user education around Upwork TOS and safety. Additionally, I assure you that we'll continue sharing users' feedback with the team and providing updates to the Community about team's initiatives. Feel free to check an update in this post for more information about the team's efforts around addressing these issues.

[spxinsane]

Thank you for the reply.

Maybe it will be easyer to just let people post new jobs only if they have a verified payment method and that i think will just minimize the flow of scam/spam posts. 

[moonraker]

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Adrian S wrote:

Thank you for the reply.

only if they have a verified payment method

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No way.

Some of us make good money from those. If you don't want to apply to them then don't, but other people should not lose out just because you don't like them. You can even filter them out if you don't want to see them.

[rolludesig]

how do you make money from those i am wondering, firstly i dont think a client can accept your proposal until his payment method is verified FYI

[moonraker]

Make sure they fund a milestone before you get started. If they refuse then don't accept the job.

It's that simple. And in the meantime, I get to benefit from winning jobs with help fomr less competition.

[spxinsane]

In order to make money from a client, they need to verify the payment anyhow.

I dind't said they should ban unverififed payment user, but have you seen the jobs feed lately ? Only spam after spam after spam. In order to find a job where you can bid on it takes a lot of time because you have to go past tens on spam job posts. I also bid on unverified clients don't get me wrong but having the feed fool of spam in frustrating

[moonraker]

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Adrian S wrote:

In order to make money from a client, they need to verify the payment anyhow.

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And the freelancer can request the client funds a milestone before starting. unverified payment does not mean the client cannot pay. It only means thay have not verified their payment YET.

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Adrian S wrote:

I dind't said they should ban unverififed payment user,

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Insisting on a verified payment before a job is the same thing as banning unverified clients. The effect is the same. You don't get to have your cake and eat.

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Adrian S wrote:

 but have you seen the jobs feed lately ?

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Yes, I am a freelancer and I have no doubt spent a **** load more time looking the the job feed than you have.

Spam/scam jobs are not a problem for me and other freelancers who know how to use the system. You are free to take whichever approach you wish to overcome it, but you don't get to decide that other people should lose out just because you're struggling.

*Edit:... AND you can filter out jobs with no verifiied payment anyway. You're asking for a policy that will affect other people's earnings, but you only have to tick a box to get your own way.

[rolludesig]

absolutely agree !!!  if a client is a serious one he/she wont have any issue in having his payment method verified otherwise i am sorry to say things are going wrong way pretty fast

[moonraker]

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Rahul V wrote:

absolutely agree !!!  if a client is a serious one he/she wont have any issue in having his payment method verified otherwise i am sorry to say things are going wrong way pretty fast

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This is false.

Expecting new clients to pay to post jobs only results in friction. Such friction WILL mean fewer  new jobs being posted. And that's just a fact that any good UI/UX designer will tell you.

The system works. Demonstrably so. After all, many thousands of freelancers do well on the platform. Either way, the platform should definitely not be bought down to the level of the strugglers.

People need to stop making excuses and look to their own shortcomings instead. And I mean that constructively. It's frustrating to think that so many people, many desperately in need of an income, likely give up because of misplaced negativity.

[28425c32]

I'm seeing tons of scam jobs that are verified. They often have similar but really specific verbage, all offer flat rate pay amounts between $500-$800, all claim to be US or Canada-based, and even sometimes show a hire. They also all have .rar or other attachments and if you happen to download one it's password-protected or you end up with some kind of spammy video or TXT document in what I think is Chinese. 

[rolludesig]

and most disappointing part is even flagging such jobs is not working and giving an error messsage:(

[lem23]

In VO category I have similar bad experience. And this is happening since long ago now. One client just posts the same job many times in a row and my feed loods like on this picture. And all I can do with this is just fold up the job post.

[renata101]

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Adrian S wrote:

Do we need to migrate to other platforms or is there going to be a resolution ?

I consider this is a real issues since if the problem isn't resolved the freelancers are going to leave the site.

Unfortunately, many areas of Upwork are currently oversaturated (design is definitely one). So the prospect of a lot of people leaving the site may not make a difference to the company's bottom line.  And people seem to function and make money despite the scam posts. My main worry is that Upwork ends up getting a reputation as a shady place to try to do business. If that impression takes hold in the public perception of the company, it will really, really hurt freelancers.

I wish this issue had been dealt with months ago. I think scammers have had a lot of opportunity to test new things out to see what works. I think the idea of heaps of scam posts going up every day has been normalized by the company, and I doubt there's any sort of constructive plan to combat it.

The issue isn't new. People have been calling attention to it for a few months now. Here's one fix that's been proposed by a freelancer:
https://community.upwork.com/t5/Freelancers/Upwork-Scam-Post-Detector-Chrome-Extension/m-p/1048524

I wish there was a way to filter to posts before they go up, but currently, Upwork appears dependent on people flagging them retroactively (and now there's no way for freelancers to even flag them).

[pgiambalvo]

Flagging is still down for me, too. 3 days now.

[martina_plaschka]

I'm not going to leave or anything, I know how to handle the scam postings. I don't even filter them out, I just skip them. I am also very unlikely to fall for a scam, since I know that nobody in the world pays $$$$ for typing a pdf to word, or the other way around, doesn't matter. As long as there are freelancer lacking this knowledge, the scammers will not go away. 

[kkears]

I think the crux of Adrian's original post is that it's incredibly time-consuming and discouraging to dig through post after post after post that are obviously scams (not that we're unable to identify them in the first place).

When we are on a platform that takes a whopping 20% (or 10%) of our earnings,  it's fair to be more than upset that scam posts are taking up 99% of our job feed. 

We all know that Upwork is oversaturated with freelancers in certain categories, so it's necessarily "easy" to secure a job unless you have an established, high-rated profile. But now, the oversaturation of scam posts is a big factor into finding a viable job to apply for in the first place. 

[martina_plaschka]

Then filter them out. Scam postings have nothing to do with real postings. The real clients are still there, they don't go away just because there are scammers on the platform. It's not like scammers decrease the number of real jobs. 

[spxinsane]

Thats my point, the time that it takes to filter past all the scams. I am aware that all the freelancing websites are over saturated especialy in the category that i work (design and image editing). Working on multiple platforms doesn't always give me the time to stay and do all the "weed wacking" in my feed here and also the flagg function is down for some days. This afternoon i opened my feed and 10 out of 10 jobs where fake so i just closed the tab. It's not the ideea that i don't have what to work it's just the frustration that we as freelancer pay our fees and the website doesn't really care about the freelancers. That's my opinion. Sincerly before Elance and oDesk merged they had better customer support for freelancers but that may also be because the number of freelancers was lower. Anyway i hope they will find a way to lower the spams in the job feed

[yofazza]

There's a lot of things Upwork can do or at least show that they "care more" about freelancers, but what's the benefit from doing that?

Money flow from client. Everything that might affect the client's "comfort" must be done very carefully.

Freelancers are also scamming in different levels (see the Client forum). This is far more important to address because they are messing with the source of the money. They give clients bad experience.

Freelancers can learn to filter scam by themselves, unconsiously or by using the search filters. So creating an advanced-scam-detection-AI is out of the question. 

Caring more about freelancers, preventing new freelancers from having a bad experience, is not a wise thing to do. Doing the opposite, can actually help with another problem of freelancer oversupply. A kind of natural selection is currently in action.

Even putting warnings about scams, are done carefully to prevent bad publicity. "There's nothing too serious about these scams" , is what it is.

Freelancers, including the big ones, are still working without the spamscams affecting them, They sometimes come to the forum with other problem and gone again back to their big work. So I think there's not much change in Upwork income.

Don't get me wrong, I'm just pointing out what I think about what's happening. I'm also freelancing since Elance times but I don't depend to any of them.

There are companies with equal size, that are being more "casual" and "open" about their problems. They prefer to "do the right thing". In Upwork's case it'll be like putting the prevention of naive new freelancers from losing money into a higher priority. I respect them more than Upwork.

In fact a company who actually use "don't be evil" as motto refund money to my card after my "balance" got "hacked". They now get trust from someone who regularly being skeptical about everything.

I know it's not easy to "do the right thing" because of other things that must be put into calculation, and it depends on how much profit they can assign for that, etc. etc. We can only observe where this will go into and hope for the best.