Hon offers a more technical formulation: Working as a Turker essentially means living “below the API,” or application programming interface. As he writes, “If you live above the API, you’re playing the game, and if you live below it, you’re being played. You’re an NPC—a non-player character.”
A very astute observation. Even within video games, there's a tendency to push players "below the API" in favour of whales "above" it. Think I'll add this book to the to-read list over the holidays.