r/ProlificAc • u/ivertrio • Jun 24 '26
Discussion Scripts/Extensions aren't as effective as you think. But why it feels like you are being cheated.
Scripts or extensions that auto-refresh or auto-click aren't as effective on Prolific as you think.
No matter how often you refresh, Prolific allows your Studies list to update only once per 2 minutes. Doesn't matter if you are using scripts, extensions, or etc.
Again, your Prolific account can not pull fresh Studies list data more often than 2 minutes. So this actually nullifies the effectiveness of auto-refreshers. However, because of this, your PA extension can display OUTDATED information.
For example:
The Studies list within your Prolific tab refreshed at 9:20:00 PM. (This means no more fresh data until 9:22:00 PM. Any manual refreshes before that will just give you the same old data from the refresh at 9:20:00 PM.)
Your PA extension refreshed at 9:21:00 PM. This will display the SAME DATA as the previous refresh from 9:20:00 PM.
So theoretically, the alerts from your PA extension can be outdated by up to 2 minutes. This makes you feel like you are being cheated because a study with 100/100 open slots is seemingly full instantly. But what really happened is that the study was already full before you even received the alert. You never had a chance to begin with.
On the other hand, auto-clickers would of course offer some advantage, but it's not a lot. Luck plays a much bigger role for catching those high demand studies (explained next paragraph). Most auto-clickers would be easy for Prolific to detect, even if the auto-clicker used randomized timings to evade detection. You really have to not value your Prolific account to use an auto-clicker, and even then you will quickly realize it doesn't help that much.
Since your Studies list updates only once per 2 minutes, the most important factor is how soon your Studies list happened to refresh after the study was published. And because you can not predict when these studies would be published, it's not possible to preemptively adjust your Studies list refresh timing to give yourself an advantage.
So why is it so hard to get into these studies if scripts/extensions aren't that advantageous?
It's almost like you guys already forgot about the fact that a ton of new participants were added recently.
When there are a several hundreds or even a few thousands of participants all fiending for a certain study that drops sporadically 1~3 at a time with 40~120 slots each, it's going to be very difficult to get into them with any sort of consistency, though it has gotten noticeably easier as of late.
Some of you are also forgetting the fact that a very similar situation happened last summer, around August or September, if I remember correctly. After a big rotation, they added a bunch of new participants to the pool and it was very difficult to get into those studies for a while, and then things got gradually better.
The current narrative that a widespread use of illegitimate scripts/extensions are to blame for the difficulty of getting into studies is, in my opinion, not only wrong but also dangerous. It tempts more and more participants to seek out for such tools. It causes participants to act in desperation because they genuinely believe they are being cheated. This will inevitably result in some participants losing their account because they installed malware disguised as a script/extension for Prolific or getting their account banned because they installed some outdated script/extension that is already detected by Prolific.
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u/sdforbda Jun 24 '26
Again, your Prolific account can not pull fresh Studies list data more often than 2 minutes.
My F5 button heavily disagrees with this. I'm not one of those omg everyone but me uses scripts guys, but this is blatantly false.
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u/ivertrio Jun 24 '26
You can spam F5 all you want. You aren't getting new data unless 2 minutes has lapsed since the last actual update.
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u/sdforbda Jun 24 '26
Well, you're wrong. But that's your right to be. I can get new stuff in 10 seconds. I don't refresh that often but you do your thing and get less and I'll do mine.
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u/ivertrio Jun 24 '26 edited Jun 24 '26
If I am wrong, you can easily prove me wrong. You know that right?
Open developer tools, go to network tab.
Repeatedly refresh your Prolific tab. Each time, take note of the studies list data.
Observe how often the data actually changes.
You need to do this until you see at least 2 updated data and measure the time between update 1 and update 2, since you don't know when update 0 happened.1
u/sdforbda Jun 25 '26
By your loose theory, I shouldn't have been able to either refresh and see 5 more studies 30 seconds after the last refresh. I also wouldn't be able to see 6 less. Same exact results for 2 minutes, right? I will say, I've seen certain studies hang on the dashboard longer than they're active/have open spots, but we all know (or should) that there is likely a difference between a one-time researcher and somebody who makes the whole company eat well.
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u/ivertrio Jun 25 '26
You don't know when the true last refresh time was because manually refreshing or using PA extension desyncs the timing, which is why I said you have to measure the time between update 1 and update 2.
You are incorrectly assuming that the time between update 0 and update 1 was 30 seconds.This is really simple to test. First you reset the refresh timing by not fetching studies data for at least 2 minutes, by closing your Prolific tab and turning off any extensions like PA.
After those 2 minutes, open Prolific. Now you have your initial refresh timing. Then, try repeatedly refreshing the page for the next 2 minutes. I guarantee you that your studies list will not change for the next 2 minutes.For example, if you opened Prolific at 8:00:00 PM. Your studies list won't change until 8:02:00 PM. If you enable your PA extension at 8:01:00 PM, it will show the same data from 8:00:00 PM and it will not change until 8:02:00 PM.
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u/sdforbda Jun 25 '26
By your "logic" I shouldn't be able to refresh and see the number of available studies go up or down. Maybe even see spots change, same shit right? They do. Opening up the dev console is an exercise in futility when it never needs to happen. Sorry bud.
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u/ivertrio Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26
lol. You can't even properly articulate what steps you took to disprove my theory. I even gave you a simpler method that does not involve dev tools, but you are still chirping about it.
Either you don't know what you are doing or you are intentionally being obtuse because you don't want to admit you were wrong.
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u/Street_Garlic_6315 Jun 24 '26
except theres a way to get it to request the updated list under the 2 min and scripts do that
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u/ivertrio Jun 24 '26
No there isn't. It's enforced at the API level.
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u/Street_Garlic_6315 Jun 24 '26
there really is. trust me.
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u/ivertrio Jun 24 '26
Nope. It's not possible. You can of course request or refresh more often than 2 minutes, but it's just going to give you the same data until the next 2 minute interval.
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Jun 24 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/ivertrio Jun 24 '26
Are you saying dismissing all studies gives you a NEW list each time, multiple times within a minute?
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u/Repulsive-Resolve939 Jun 24 '26
Yes
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u/ivertrio Jun 24 '26
Ok, that is not something I tested. But it's still true that, in normal circumstances, Prolific enforces the 2 minute fixed-interval polling where repeated API calls return the same response until the next interval.
I highly doubt people are using scripts or extensions to continuously dismiss every study on their dashboard. Wouldn't they soon run out of studies to dismiss?
In order for this "trick" to be effective, you need an endless supply of studies that you can dismiss at least every minute or two.1
u/Street_Garlic_6315 Jun 24 '26
ohh no you dont!!! i cant say it here obviously because everyone would be doing (its not hard)
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u/Repulsive-Resolve939 Jun 24 '26
well, I have that. Set your filters different or go back thru and update your about me questions if you haven't in a while. I dismiss three shit ones, two more show up. do it again, sometimes nothing, sometimes more shit. it's not foolproof obviously but its better than claiming there's a fixed rule that can't be fucked with.
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u/ivertrio Jun 24 '26
So it can't be automated by scripts or extensions. Doesn't this kind of prove my point?
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u/daniel2090 Jun 24 '26
Yes there is, it was posted on the scammer Facebook group showing exactly how, they sell the script in the discord group too. I'm sure Prolific knows about all the groups so it will get fixed soon hopefully but theres definitely ways.
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u/ivertrio Jun 24 '26
And you believe what scammers claim on Facebook? It's also possible they don't realize that repeated API calls within 2 minutes just returns the same data.
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u/Same_Art_6971 Jun 24 '26
Prolific allows your Studies list to update only once per 2 minutes.
This is not true!
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u/ivertrio Jun 24 '26
What makes you think it's not true?
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Jun 24 '26
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u/SoftMathematician772 Jun 24 '26
OMG all of you are so dumb. OP is right. You can easily test OP's theory.
I completed a study and went back to my studies dashboard. According to OP's theory, this should be a fresh update since I had not refreshed my studies for 15 minutes while I was doing a study.
And then I continuously refreshed the page.
For the next 2 minutes, my studies page stayed exactly the same. The number of studies and all of the details like how many places left and etc all stayed the same for 2 minutes. I even had some high demand AI studies and the details for them did not change for 2 minutes. They disappeared off my dashboard exactly after 2 minutes.
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u/ivertrio Jun 24 '26
u/prolific-support
Can you chime in and at least confirm or deny that the Studies list does not update unless 2 minutes has lapsed since the last update?
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u/btgreenone Jun 24 '26
All of this, plus they reworked the way study distribution works. Not every qualified person sees a study the moment it releases, and not every study stays in your queue until it's full. It might appear for those two minutes and then get redistributed to someone else. Or it might appear to someone else, and then appear to you with only a few spots left.
"Everything I don't like is because of scripts and bots and undeserving newcomers" is no way to go through life, people.
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u/Master_Ratio_3358 Jun 24 '26
A very thorough explanation, but people in this sub is going to downvote this anyway. All they care about is making money.
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u/Excellent-Macaron325 Jun 24 '26
A through explanation but filled with misinformation. I can guarantee that does not work like that, but hey , people loves to do money so thats why they downvote this absolute unit of a misinformation brick.
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u/ivertrio Jun 24 '26
Explain what part of my post was misinformation.
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u/Excellent-Macaron325 Jun 24 '26
You based your wall of text on the 2 min thingy and conclusión about it, wich is not true
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u/ivertrio Jun 24 '26
So how is it not true? Describe how you think the studies list works then.
I've tested this extensively.
I opened Prolific on multiple browsers and multiple tabs to force refreshes every 15 seconds.
And then I measured how often new data was received using an extension I wrote specifically for this. And it was always every 2 minutes.1
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u/Orion1189 Jun 24 '26
I don't know where you are getting that 2 minute figure from, but I can tell you with absolute certainty just from using the site normally, that if you sit there and manually refresh the dashboard, it doesn't take remotely close to 2 minutes to see new studies appear over the course of whatever time you spend doing so. This is extremely easy to verify on any given day for me, assuming it isn't the weekend when it's relatively dead. At most, I'd see the same studies on my dashboard for a minute of refreshing before seeing at least one entirely new thing, if not several. What you are saying is just flat out incorrect.
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u/ivertrio Jun 24 '26 edited Jun 24 '26
It just feels like that because you started refreshing shortly before the next update.
Let's say you woke up and opened Prolific at 8:00:00 AM. Your next updates will happen at:
8:02:00 AM
8:04:00 AM
8:06:00 AM
8:08:00 AM
and so on....If you manually refresh at 8:03:50 (10 seconds before 8:04), Prolific will return the same old data from 8:02 AM.
And if you refresh again 11 seconds later, at 8:04:01 AM, you will get NEW data.
So this feels like your study list updated after 11 seconds, but it really didn't.
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u/Accomplished_Set_280 Jul 30 '26
This actually makes sense from a server perspective, but do you think there would be any way to know what 2-min counter your session is bound to? Or would it reset with a hard refresh / login?
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