Automated monitoring and decisions

This notice is for heads. It explains the automated systems 50heads uses to check answers and to make, or help people make, decisions about your account and your pay. It is the information that the EU Platform Work Directive (Directive (EU) 2024/2831) requires us to give people who do platform work in the EU. We give it to every head, wherever you live, and the rights in section 6 apply to all heads.

50heads Limited (company number 17486968), a company registered in England and Wales, is the platform operator and the controller of your data. These terms sit alongside the terms for heads and the privacy notice.

1. When you get this notice

• In the app, before your first paid answer.
• Again, at least 30 days before we introduce a new automated system or change one in a way that affects you, and before your next paid answer.
• At any time on request: use the contact form and we'll send it, in writing, free of charge.

Where the law gives heads' representatives or a labor authority a right to see this information, we give it to them too.

2. The automated monitoring systems we use

Monitoring runs only while you're answering or taking a check in the app. Nothing is collected when the app is closed or in the background, and nothing is collected from other apps on your phone.

Data from these systems goes only to 50heads staff with a need to see it, and to the service providers listed on our subprocessors page that run the checks (for example Apple and Google for device integrity). It isn't sold or shared with requesters. Requesters never see who answered.

3. The automated decisions we make

3.1 Which questions you see

Your question list is built automatically from:

• your tier;
• the languages you read;
• the traits you chose to share (age band, gender, tags), when a question targets them;
• the content warnings you opted into.

Targeted and rush questions come first, then the oldest, so questions fill evenly. Your trust score (section 3.4) does not change which questions you see or their order, and every head in the same tier with the same traits sees the same questions.

3.2 Whether an answer is paid

An answer is automatically not paid when:

• it arrives faster than the question's minimum reading time;
• it repeats an answer you have already given;
• it's a wrong answer to a check question;
• it comes from a device or app that fails the integrity check;
• the answer pattern shows automation.

The reason is shown in Earnings in one of these categories: too fast, repeat, check question, automated, linked accounts, shared payout method, or confirmed fraud. For each unpaid answer we also show what it would have paid.

To stop people learning to game the checks, a reason appears after a short delay rather than the moment you answer. The delay is usually an hour and never more than 23 hours. We never say which question was a check question or what the threshold was.

3.3 When your pay becomes available

• New pay is Pending (earned, still inside the holding period) for a fixed time before it becomes Available to withdraw: 7 days, 3 days at Tier 3, and 48 hours for founding heads on up to $66 of new pay a week.
• This timing is the same for everyone at that tier. It isn't set by the trust score.

3.4 Trust score and holds

• What goes into the score. Each head has a trust score that the system works out from three things, in this order of importance:
  • signals from the monitoring in section 2, where a stronger signal counts for more and each signal counts for less as it gets older, up to 90 days;
  • how often your check-question answers are right;
  • how many accepted answers you have given.
• What the score does. It decides one thing automatically: when the score is low, your payouts wait and pending pay stops clearing, so that a person can look at your account. We don't publish the exact threshold.
• When a hold starts. We tell you in the app and by email, and a person reviews the account.
• Who sees the score. You don't see the raw score, and neither do our staff; they see a band (low, medium or high risk).

3.5 Tier changes, re-checks and account restrictions

• A run of wrong check answers marks your account for a person to review. A person decides whether to move you to Tier 0 for two weeks, and we tell you if they do. At Tier 0 you see warm-up questions only, not paid questions.
• Tier 2 re-checks. Tier 2 heads are occasionally asked to repeat the live-face check. The chance is the same for everyone and small. If you dismiss it three times, the account is marked for a person to review, and a person decides whether you move back to Tier 1.
• Other restrictions. Suspending, freezing, closing or clawing back pay from an account is always decided by a person, never by the system alone.

3.6 Payout checks

• Sanctions screening. Payouts are screened automatically against sanctions lists (section 2). A possible match holds the payout until a person reviews it. Where sanctions law stops us telling you why a payout is held, we tell you only that it is held for a check.
• Balance holds. A payout can also wait for the next batch if our balance in its currency is short. That isn't a decision about you.

3.7 Identity checks (Tier 2)

The Tier 2 check compares a live selfie with the photo on your own ID document, one to one, through Stripe Identity. We never compare your face against a database of other people's faces. We keep only the result and your age band; the provider deletes the images after its decision. See the verification page and the privacy notice.

4. What we never do

We don't use automated systems to:

• process data about your emotional or psychological state;
• read your private messages, including messages with other heads or with anyone who represents you;
• collect data while you're not answering or taking a check;
• predict or monitor whether you join a union or take part in collective action;
• infer your racial or ethnic origin, migration status, political opinions, religious beliefs, health, disability, sexual orientation or trade union membership.

We never compare your face with a database of other people to identify you.

The age band, gender and tags you choose to share are used only to match you to questions that ask for them. They play no part in the trust score or in any decision in section 3.

5. People in the loop

• Who decides. A trained member of the 50heads trust team makes every decision to restrict, suspend or close an account, to claw back pay, or of equivalent effect. Automated systems can only flag an account for that person, or hold it while they look.
• Staff protection. Staff who review or overrule the systems have the authority to do so and are protected from any detriment for it.
• Reviews of the systems. At least every two years, and whenever we change a system, we assess how the automated systems affect heads, including their effect on how you work and your health and safety. We share the assessment with heads' representatives where the law requires it.
• Stopping a system. If a system is found to infringe heads' rights or to cause unjustified harm, we stop using it or change it.
• Data protection impact assessment. We keep a DPIA for these systems and review it when they change.

6. Your rights

• An explanation. You can ask for an explanation of any decision an automated system made or supported, and talk it through with a person. Use Help → Contact in the app, or the contact form. A named person on the trust team answers.
• Reasons in writing. When we restrict, suspend or close your account, don't pay for an answer, take pay back, change your tier or hold your payouts, we give you the reasons in writing, in the app and by email. You get them without undue delay, and at the latest on the day the decision takes effect. Section 3.6 describes the one case where sanctions law limits what we can say.
• A review.
  • Ask in the app (appeals) or by email.
  • A person who was not part of the original decision reviews it and replies in writing, with reasons, within two weeks at the latest.
  • In plain terms: we aim to decide appeals about an unpaid answer within 48 hours and other appeals within five business days, as set out in our terms for heads. Two weeks is the outer limit for every appeal.
  • Pay appeals are open for 30 days after an answer shows as not paid.
• A put-right. If the review finds we got it wrong, we put it right within two weeks: we restore the account or tier, pay what was held back, and if that isn't possible, compensate you.
• Keeping your data. You can ask for your data, including the data these systems used, in a portable format (Settings → Export).
• Complaints. You can complain to the data protection authority where you live or work. In the UK that is the Information Commissioner's Office.
• No retaliation. Using these rights never counts against you.

7. Changes

We'll tell you at least 30 days before any change to this notice that affects you, in the app and by email.

Questions: the contact form.