Came on, where is your sense of adventure? :) seriously, this kind of rabbit holes are one of the best parts of HN, and every body understand they are just rethoric exercises.

Obviously you wouldn't do it with just one phone - you'd get a cluster of several hundred/thousand.

I could definitely picture myself as a teenager getting a bunch of shitty old Android devices to make $20 a month, though. My younger cousins will fill out surveys with fake info to make a few bucks here or there.