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It used to be some benign OCR task, now it's "please identify street signs from photographs we've taken". Once they can correctly classify street signs, what el
by jstanley 9y ago
It used to be some benign OCR task, now it's "please identify street signs from photographs we've taken". Once they can correctly classify street signs, what else will they want? "please click on the faces you recognise?"? "please click on the faces of your friends that are labelled with the correct names?"?
I've started opting out of Google Captcha's wherever doing so isn't too burdensome. If I see a Google Captcha and I don't really want to get to the other side, I just close the tab and forget about it, rather than subject myself to their capricious gatekeeping.
- userbinator 9y agoSome people I know online have basically started buying "captcha tokens" --- the same ones that spammers use when they want to bypass them in bulk. Depending on your morals (keeping in mind these services are mainly third-world-country sweatshop labour), it might be a better choice than spending your own brainpower on such things, and a way of giving Google a virtual middle finger.
- mikeash 9y agoDoesn’t Google get what they want either way?
- userbinator 9y agoThey get solved captchas, but they're not using the user's brainpower and time to do it.
- andrewchambers 9y agoAll google cares about is getting the captchas solved to train their AI.
- NullPrefix 9y agoCut the middle man out, they could hire the sweatshop directly.
- iakov 9y agoThe sweatshop wants money, millions of users solve captchas daily, for free. Clever.