Are non-US citizens studying in the US with an F1 visa allowed to sign a statement of work with no payment but only gives them access to some account?

Question

Are non-US citizens studying in the US with an F1 visa allowed to sign a statement of work with some US-based company with no fee/payment attached but only gives them access to the company's account on some third-party website (e.g., Amazon MTurk for the student to perform data collection for their own research projects but paid by the company)?

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I looked at some websites on working as a non-US citizen while studying in the US with a F1 visa, such as:

• https://iss.wisc.edu/employment/f1-employment/f-1-curricular-practical-training-cpt/paid-vs-unpaid-cpt/
• https://www.nyu.edu/students/student-information-and-resources/student-visa-and-immigration/current-students/employment-and-tax/unpaid-internships-and-volunteer-work.html
• https://internationalcenter.umich.edu/students/f1-students/cpt

but I don't know what the answer is for my use case.

Answer 1

In summary, Company A will hire someone from Amazon MTurk to provide services for them under your management. Therefore, you are acting as a manager for company A but you will not be compensated for this management work.

To me that is a work relationship and therefore requires work authorization, CPT if pursuing a degree or OPT if you're done with your degree. An exception for that is if Company A is in fact the university that you're attending. In this case you will follow the guidelines for on-campus work, which does not require authorization from USCIS.