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One example for sure is the endless CAPTCHAs you receive on virtually any large website when you attempt to connect from TOR. Each time you solve one it takes f

One example for sure is the endless CAPTCHAs you receive on virtually any large website when you attempt to connect from TOR. Each time you solve one it takes forever just to complain about how you spending several minutes selecting every 'light' suddenly isn't good enough to prove your humanity. You're not "checking if I'm human" 60 times in a row, you're blocking me for not wanting to be tracked on your website.

busymom0 5y ago
Would be so much better for them to simply tell you "we do not allow using our site via TOR" which is totally understandable instead of such nonsense.
justinph 5y ago
Can happen with non-TOR, too. Cloudflare is a cancer on the web for this kind of awfulness.
- hda2 5y ago
  For me, Cloudflare and hCaptcha walls are solved problems with things like Privacy Pass. It's Google's never-ending captcha system that prevents me from browsing the web. They continue refusing to support Privacy Pass like other big players for some reason that is certainly not related to free labor and going around US labor laws.
- privacyking 5y ago
  Google's captcha is orders of magnitude worse.
magnetowasright 5y ago
I experience this using Firefox temporary container extension, some other privacy extensions/settings, and a pihole. The worst bit is when it refuses to let you use an audio captcha; I can’t believe they’re allowed to take away accessibility on a whim. Not that it really makes much difference to the website but I’ll usually give up and maybe send them an email if I care enough to let them know that it’s not accessible. The captcha where you slide the puzzle piece into place I’ve found is a much better user experience and presumably achieves the same goals (minus helping train image recognition). It’s a little bit ugly/looks like one of those spam interactive banner ads but I wish more sites used it anyway if they need protection.
- hakfoo 5y ago
  I got that captcha somewhere recently, and I found the UX appaling as a first-time user. "Slide the control to complete the picture". I interpreted it the first time as looking like the old iOS slide-to-unlock convention: "Once I slide the control over, it will complete the picture correctly." Now, this may be a well-intentioned accessibility thing, but it wasn't obvious that the slider was connected to the puzzle piece in the same way. This was reinforced by the fact it was a bit janky on my entirely overkill rig, so the puzzle piece was moving out of synch with the slider until after I had overshot and failed the CAPTCHA. I always wondered if we had much hard data on both the efficacy and the necessity of captchas. If you're not selling 3080s, you probably just need the most minimal deterrence to auto-scrapers-- the old "seven + 4 = " CAPTCHA probably does enough at a very low processing and accessibility cost.
judge2020 5y ago
I doubt this one would get any traction given there's no way to tell between between a human and a bot request when the past 10k requests from a single IP all hit within 10 seconds of each other, likely indicating a bot. They're not going to outlaw a solution to a real problem when there's no other solution besides requiring an account or otherwise decreasing user privacy.
AlexCoventry 5y ago
I can't see the US government getting excited about regulating away a pattern which makes TOR harder to use, though.
- throwaway2048 5y ago
  The US government funds TOR, seemingly with a bet it does more to destabilize its enemies than to enable assholes.
livinginfear 5y ago
This is likely coming from reCAPTCHA itself. As another commenter noted reCAPTCHA is likely detecting a large amount of interaction originating from your particular exit node's IP. This flaw is Google's responsibility, not that of the site. It's less of a dark pattern than a common usage pattern being incorrectly interpreted as hostile.

busymom0 5y ago

Would be so much better for them to simply tell you "we do not allow using our site via TOR" which is totally understandable instead of such nonsense.

justinph 5y ago

Can happen with non-TOR, too. Cloudflare is a cancer on the web for this kind of awfulness.

hda2 5y ago
For me, Cloudflare and hCaptcha walls are solved problems with things like Privacy Pass. It's Google's never-ending captcha system that prevents me from browsing the web. They continue refusing to support Privacy Pass like other big players for some reason that is certainly not related to free labor and going around US labor laws.
privacyking 5y ago
Google's captcha is orders of magnitude worse.

magnetowasright 5y ago

I experience this using Firefox temporary container extension, some other privacy extensions/settings, and a pihole. The worst bit is when it refuses to let you use an audio captcha; I can’t believe they’re allowed to take away accessibility on a whim. Not that it really makes much difference to the website but I’ll usually give up and maybe send them an email if I care enough to let them know that it’s not accessible. The captcha where you slide the puzzle piece into place I’ve found is a much better user experience and presumably achieves the same goals (minus helping train image recognition). It’s a little bit ugly/looks like one of those spam interactive banner ads but I wish more sites used it anyway if they need protection.

hakfoo 5y ago
I got that captcha somewhere recently, and I found the UX appaling as a first-time user. "Slide the control to complete the picture". I interpreted it the first time as looking like the old iOS slide-to-unlock convention: "Once I slide the control over, it will complete the picture correctly." Now, this may be a well-intentioned accessibility thing, but it wasn't obvious that the slider was connected to the puzzle piece in the same way. This was reinforced by the fact it was a bit janky on my entirely overkill rig, so the puzzle piece was moving out of synch with the slider until after I had overshot and failed the CAPTCHA. I always wondered if we had much hard data on both the efficacy and the necessity of captchas. If you're not selling 3080s, you probably just need the most minimal deterrence to auto-scrapers-- the old "seven + 4 = " CAPTCHA probably does enough at a very low processing and accessibility cost.

judge2020 5y ago

I doubt this one would get any traction given there's no way to tell between between a human and a bot request when the past 10k requests from a single IP all hit within 10 seconds of each other, likely indicating a bot. They're not going to outlaw a solution to a real problem when there's no other solution besides requiring an account or otherwise decreasing user privacy.

AlexCoventry 5y ago

I can't see the US government getting excited about regulating away a pattern which makes TOR harder to use, though.

throwaway2048 5y ago
The US government funds TOR, seemingly with a bet it does more to destabilize its enemies than to enable assholes.

livinginfear 5y ago

This is likely coming from reCAPTCHA itself. As another commenter noted reCAPTCHA is likely detecting a large amount of interaction originating from your particular exit node's IP. This flaw is Google's responsibility, not that of the site. It's less of a dark pattern than a common usage pattern being incorrectly interpreted as hostile.