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And I SUCK at these to the point where I think I’m not getting the rules of the game. For example, for the one with traffic lights: Am I supposed to just mark

And I SUCK at these to the point where I think I’m not getting the rules of the game. For example, for the one with traffic lights: Am I supposed to just mark the light bulbs or also the poles and beams?

darkpuma 8y ago
You're doing it right. Google is gaslighting you; lying and telling you you've failed challenges when you actually solved them correctly. They do this to punish users who opt out of the google 'ecosystem' by not having a google account, not using chrome, using adblockers, etc. The proof of this assertion comes when you manage to enable the noscript version of reCAPTCHA (which is only available on sites that have opted to use the lowest security setting). Once you start using noscript reCAPTCHA, you discover that your correct answers are accepted the first time every time. The challenges have the same format; click the cars, click the traffic lights, etc. There are two differences: the tiles don't fade in slowly, and the correct answers are always accepted. Presumably when google implemented their dark patterns in reCAPTCHA, they couldn't be bothered to implement them when javascript wasn't available. I hesitate to draw attention to this since Google might correct their error, but I'd like for people to become more aware of their anti-social business practices. (By the way, the noscript version will accept either sort of answer. Only the bulbs, or the entire enclosure. Both answers are accepted.)
- userbinator 8y ago
  I've seen those ones too, and was planning on writing a filter that replaces the "normal" ones with the noscript one, on the assumption that it was just someone not copying in a "<noscript>...</noscript>" fragment, but since you mention "is only available on sites that have opted to use the lowest security setting", I suspect that won't work. Accessibility guidelines used to mandate that content was accessible without JS, which may be the reason why the noscript version exists, but it seems the latest revision has unfortunately removed that requirement. No, I will not run arbitrary code on my computer just to access your site...
- RobertRoberts 8y ago
  Can I suggest we stop using "dark patterns" as a criticism for evil behavior? I think Google (or someone) sponsored the name "dark patterns" so they can be accused of it all day long and no one will really care. Manipulation, lying, deceit, stealing, call it it what it is. Not some watered-down marketing phrase to let these guys off the hook.
- jjeaff 8y ago
  I actually don't think that they are trying to punish people for not being logged in. If that were the case, they would make it clear that having a Google account and leaving it logged in, and using chrome would make the captchas appear less frequently or not at all. In reality, I think they are telling people they were wrong in order to extract just a little bit more free machine learning data from them. And really, they don't actually tell you that you are wrong, they just keep feeding you new questions. This is most likely because they don't know whether your answer is correct or not. They are giving this specific question to a bunch of people, then comparing the answers to get a correct response for later. So you might get a few training questions first, then end with a question that they already know the correct answer to so they can decide if you are trying or not. It's quite brilliant and is going to really catapult Google ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to self driving cars. The cars will be able to use all the captcha data to not only train their ML models to recognize things like signs and whatever, but the ML won't even be fully necessary since they have the re-captcha volume to basically directly identify every roadside visual on the planet one by one.
  - nprateem 8y ago
    > In reality, I think they are telling people they were wrong in order to extract just a little bit more free machine learning data from them I doubt it because I've been seeing the same images for several months.
  - tomc1985 8y ago
    It's not brilliant, it further ruins an already dessicated web. Brilliance in the name of pissing people off is not brilliance.
    - jjeaff 8y ago
      Villains can be brilliant too.
matt4077 8y ago
This has tripped me up as well. I’m somewhat sure now that only the bulbs matter. I have also had higher success rates when not marking tiles that contain only a very small part of what they are asking for. They are sort of teaching me to better approximate more careless people.
ardy42 8y ago
> And I SUCK at these to the point where I think I’m not getting the rules of the game. I have a feeling that that they've switched from a human source of truth (e.g. 3 other people got the same tile and consistently classified it as X), to a machine source of truth (e.g. their image classifier says it's X). Now instead of thinking like a human to solve a captcha, you have to think like their sort-of-shitty "AI." Also, the recaptcha puzzle I hate the most was the one where you had to classify street signs--but then it showed you foreign signs in foreign alphabets. Street sign conventions can vary so much around the world that the puzzle was manifestly unfair. I haven't seen this one in a while, so I do hope they retired it.
black_puppydog 8y ago
I'd guess they just make you solve an appropriate (TM) number of puzzles to absolutely certain you really are not a robot. Of course, being logged in to your google account, preferably in chrome, and not blocking any of their scripts or cookies, would also go a long way for that. wink
- darkpuma 8y ago
  >"I'd guess they just make you solve an appropriate (TM) number of puzzles to absolutely certain you really are not a robot." If it were a matter of security then they wouldn't allow people with javascript disabled (which could reasonably be considered a bot-ish characteristic...) to pass through after solving a single challenge. Given how much easier the noscript version is to solve, who would make a bot that requests and solves the normal version instead of the noscript version? Any bot making a semi-serious attempt to crack their captcha will try the noscript version first. Multiple challenges aren't there for more security, they are there to get more free labor out of the human. And the tile fade-in is to punish the human for not using the web in a Google Approved™ manner.
mrob 8y ago
I feel like I have more success if I deliberately wait a few seconds before clicking things. Have you watched an average computer user click things? If you're posting here you probably have extreme outlier mouse skill, and I think Google penalizes anything unusual.

darkpuma 8y ago

You're doing it right. Google is gaslighting you; lying and telling you you've failed challenges when you actually solved them correctly. They do this to punish users who opt out of the google 'ecosystem' by not having a google account, not using chrome, using adblockers, etc. The proof of this assertion comes when you manage to enable the noscript version of reCAPTCHA (which is only available on sites that have opted to use the lowest security setting). Once you start using noscript reCAPTCHA, you discover that your correct answers are accepted the first time every time. The challenges have the same format; click the cars, click the traffic lights, etc. There are two differences: the tiles don't fade in slowly, and the correct answers are always accepted. Presumably when google implemented their dark patterns in reCAPTCHA, they couldn't be bothered to implement them when javascript wasn't available. I hesitate to draw attention to this since Google might correct their error, but I'd like for people to become more aware of their anti-social business practices. (By the way, the noscript version will accept either sort of answer. Only the bulbs, or the entire enclosure. Both answers are accepted.)

userbinator 8y ago
I've seen those ones too, and was planning on writing a filter that replaces the "normal" ones with the noscript one, on the assumption that it was just someone not copying in a "<noscript>...</noscript>" fragment, but since you mention "is only available on sites that have opted to use the lowest security setting", I suspect that won't work. Accessibility guidelines used to mandate that content was accessible without JS, which may be the reason why the noscript version exists, but it seems the latest revision has unfortunately removed that requirement. No, I will not run arbitrary code on my computer just to access your site...
RobertRoberts 8y ago
Can I suggest we stop using "dark patterns" as a criticism for evil behavior? I think Google (or someone) sponsored the name "dark patterns" so they can be accused of it all day long and no one will really care. Manipulation, lying, deceit, stealing, call it it what it is. Not some watered-down marketing phrase to let these guys off the hook.
jjeaff 8y ago
I actually don't think that they are trying to punish people for not being logged in. If that were the case, they would make it clear that having a Google account and leaving it logged in, and using chrome would make the captchas appear less frequently or not at all. In reality, I think they are telling people they were wrong in order to extract just a little bit more free machine learning data from them. And really, they don't actually tell you that you are wrong, they just keep feeding you new questions. This is most likely because they don't know whether your answer is correct or not. They are giving this specific question to a bunch of people, then comparing the answers to get a correct response for later. So you might get a few training questions first, then end with a question that they already know the correct answer to so they can decide if you are trying or not. It's quite brilliant and is going to really catapult Google ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to self driving cars. The cars will be able to use all the captcha data to not only train their ML models to recognize things like signs and whatever, but the ML won't even be fully necessary since they have the re-captcha volume to basically directly identify every roadside visual on the planet one by one.
- nprateem 8y ago
  > In reality, I think they are telling people they were wrong in order to extract just a little bit more free machine learning data from them I doubt it because I've been seeing the same images for several months.
- tomc1985 8y ago
  It's not brilliant, it further ruins an already dessicated web. Brilliance in the name of pissing people off is not brilliance.
  - jjeaff 8y ago
    Villains can be brilliant too.

matt4077 8y ago

This has tripped me up as well. I’m somewhat sure now that only the bulbs matter. I have also had higher success rates when not marking tiles that contain only a very small part of what they are asking for. They are sort of teaching me to better approximate more careless people.

ardy42 8y ago

> And I SUCK at these to the point where I think I’m not getting the rules of the game. I have a feeling that that they've switched from a human source of truth (e.g. 3 other people got the same tile and consistently classified it as X), to a machine source of truth (e.g. their image classifier says it's X). Now instead of thinking like a human to solve a captcha, you have to think like their sort-of-shitty "AI." Also, the recaptcha puzzle I hate the most was the one where you had to classify street signs--but then it showed you foreign signs in foreign alphabets. Street sign conventions can vary so much around the world that the puzzle was manifestly unfair. I haven't seen this one in a while, so I do hope they retired it.

black_puppydog 8y ago

I'd guess they just make you solve an appropriate (TM) number of puzzles to absolutely certain you really are not a robot. Of course, being logged in to your google account, preferably in chrome, and not blocking any of their scripts or cookies, would also go a long way for that. wink

darkpuma 8y ago
>"I'd guess they just make you solve an appropriate (TM) number of puzzles to absolutely certain you really are not a robot." If it were a matter of security then they wouldn't allow people with javascript disabled (which could reasonably be considered a bot-ish characteristic...) to pass through after solving a single challenge. Given how much easier the noscript version is to solve, who would make a bot that requests and solves the normal version instead of the noscript version? Any bot making a semi-serious attempt to crack their captcha will try the noscript version first. Multiple challenges aren't there for more security, they are there to get more free labor out of the human. And the tile fade-in is to punish the human for not using the web in a Google Approved™ manner.

mrob 8y ago

I feel like I have more success if I deliberately wait a few seconds before clicking things. Have you watched an average computer user click things? If you're posting here you probably have extreme outlier mouse skill, and I think Google penalizes anything unusual.