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I see this as high-IQ software developers building systems to shut out non-high-IQ people from society. Managers look at these CAPTCHAs and think "oh I could so
by DominikPeters 5y ago
I see this as high-IQ software developers building systems to shut out non-high-IQ people from society. Managers look at these CAPTCHAs and think "oh I could solve these no problem, let's use them". In fact, they can only be solved by unusually smart people or by ML bots. Arkose Labs (the maker of this particular captcha) explicitly advertises that their methods can keep out "low-skilled workers" on "human fraud farms". They keep out everyone else too if they're not that good at mental rotation and mental arithmetic or logic -- this dice puzzle and the mouse labyrinth puzzle are pretty much prototypical IQ test problems.
- bryanrasmussen 5y agoIn other words captcha use on some essential services might be a case for the courts if those services are thereby inaccessible.
- elil17 5y agoThey don’t even have to be essential services. US equal rights law would apply to any public accommodation - AirBnB being a perfect example
- Johanx64 5y agoHow do I get to play with this? I want to know if I would be filtered out
- DominikPeters 5y agoYou can go to https://www.twilio.com/login/password https://www.twilio.com/login/password and enter a fake email address and repeated fake passwords. Or one of the addresses listed here: https://github.com/dessant/buster/issues/178 https://github.com/dessant/buster/issues/178 Though I got pretty easy ones trying it.
- hobasuk 5y agotwilio site actually prompts a captcha after a few unsuccessful login tries but it just says "Pick any square". I've tried a few times and clicking any of the 6 options underneath work lol.
- qwerty456127 5y ago> In fact, they can only be solved by unusually smart people Wut? Have you actually ever met a person who can't? I always suspected the electoral majority is not particularly bright (which sort of contradicts the idea of near-100 being an average IQ nevertheless) but if this is "unusually smart" then things feel really creepy.
- dzqhz 5y agoThe average IQ by definition is 100. In civilised countries it is above that.
- qwerty456127 5y agoThat's why I wrote near-100 rather than 100. I know it can be closer to 110 or to 80 in specific countries/states. Pollution is proven to harm average IQ, other aspects of the living conditions during childhood can harm average person mental development also. It has been mentioned here on HN a number of times that childhood lead poisoning harmed mental development of a huge part of American population.
- dylan604 5y agoIn some definitions of civil, the US would not qualify.
- BiteCode_dev 5y agoI never met one in person, but in email support, yes. And it makes sense. Statistically, an IQ of 100 is the population median, meaning, assuming a Gaussian repartition (which it usually is for human traits), that's about 10% of people scoring around 80 or lower. To give an idea of what level of intelligence this means, we can wonder what that kind of people cannot do? In the US, the military don't do a systematic IQ test for recruitment, but when they did one, it was deemed illegal to induct any one if they possessed an IQ less than or equal to 81. That means 1 person out of 10 is not intelligent enough to be in the lowest rank in the army. It's not far fetched to think of the possibility that some functioning members of society are not capable of solving mental problems most humanity think are trivial. In fact, that are also trivial for AI, although we may all end up to fall into that basket one day or the other.
- dsnr 5y agoNot sure I agree with your “opressive” high-IQ developers spin, but it’s clear that whoever implements this kind of captcha (even the not-so-challenging ones) doesn’t give a shit about user experience and deserve to metaphorically-speaking, burn in hell. I think it’s just an example for how developers should not make decisions about UI or UX in general. It doesn’t really matter how hard to solve the captcha is, it shouldn’t exist in the first place, even those with: “pick all the fire hydrants”.
- onlyrealcuzzo 5y agoAirBNB doesn't want bots scraping their data. They currently have a monopoly on STR listings - so they don't really need to care about user experience. This is what you end up with.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago> AirBNB doesn't want bots scraping their data They’re likely also trying to push users to their app.
- VBprogrammer 5y agoI've never understood this concept. Reddit is the worst, though at least you can argue that they probably have all the figures to back up the idea that engagement is much higher when they push someone onto the app. For a travel app which you are only using a few times a year I can't imagine this holds. It seems like it's product managers justifying their investment in the native applications in a lot of cases.
- paultopia 5y agoLots easier to collect user data without having to worry about inconvenient browser privacy protections?
- hiccuphippo 5y agoA company I worked for in the past explicitly made the mobile web version worse so people would use the app. They did it because with the app they could send offers through push notifications. Ugh.
- jmkni 5y agoI think you're flattering yourself a bit if you believe that being able to solve a CAPTCHA means you have an unusually high IQ
- taylorlunt 5y agoYou've never spent much time around lower IQ people, I take it. The type of people who drive trucks, or bag groceries, and will never be able to do more than that. Good people, most of them, of course. But allergic to logical, deliberate thought, and barely capable of it when they try. Not everyone can do basic math, and many of those who can't, have no problem booking a hotel. These CAPTCHAs require more thought than the platform otherwise does, therefore it will gate some people from using the platform.
- IshKebab 5y agoWait are you really suggesting that the Airbnb programmers thought "guys, we need to stop low-IQ people from using our site"?? That's crazy. > explicitly advertises that their methods can keep out "low-skilled workers" on "human fraud farms" Uhm yeah. They're trying to keep people from human fraud farms (who happen to be low-skilled workers) out. It's not a weird elitist conspiracy to keep all low-IQ people from society out. Why is HN so full of paranoid conspiracy theories?
- vidarh 5y agoHow do you think they distinguish a low-skilled worker working for a human fraud farm from a low-skilled worker not working for a human fraud farm?
- jsnell 5y agoThey don't need to distinguish between those cases. They just need to make the cost of solving the captchas (either automatically or by paying a farm of low-skilled workers to solve them) higher than the value of the abuse.
- vidarh 5y agoMissing the point, which is that unless you can distinguish, then an action that stops low-skilled workers from getting through will stop those people whether or not they're doing it for fraud or because they're a genuine customer. It's probably not their intent to stop the latter, but the effect is still discriminatory.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- IshKebab 5y agoI don't. We're talking about intent.
- krageon 5y ago
- Dolores12 5y agoProof of work. I wonder if these mental exercises do increase IQ.
- viraptor 5y agoThey increase puzzle solving abilities/speed, just like any practice. Which means it increases the IQ measure, but not what people think IQ stands for.
- Jaruzel 5y agoA few studies a while back showed that those 'brain training' apps on the Nintendo consoles didn't actually improve any IQ or mental agility, so it's fair to say that these sort of captchas or similar systems don't either. https://www.sciencealert.com/do-brain-training-games-really-work-here-s-the-science https://www.sciencealert.com/do-brain-training-games-really-...
- jusssi 5y agoAt least you'll get better at solving that particular kind of problem. So if IQ is defined as your ability to solve that kind of problem, then yes, your IQ will increase.
- taylorlunt 5y agoIt isn't.
- lobocinza 5y agoThey improve your ability of doing them.
- dathinab 5y agoI wonder if they are doing businesses in the EU especially Germany, because then they would be pretty much in breach of the German constitution and even admitting to doing so intentionally...
- dathinab 5y agoThey don't even keep out low skilled workers as they don't need much IQ, at least for a worker who is repeatedly solving them and was thought the best approach to do so. What they keep out is people with Discalculia, which are in no way stupid or low IQ, just can't to math well. (They also would probably be able to do it, but probably take to long and/or get offended enough to not do it).
- ArenaSource 5y agoA High-IQ Software developer: - Calculates the sum on the first picture - Reads the instructions - Reads the instructions again - Stares at the six pictures for one second - Closes the page
- agotterer 5y agoI thought these captcha companies made money by selling image classification services? Isn’t it possible that someone wanted these dice images classified for some machine learning project to do with dice?
- whoknew1122 5y agoIf I could only give more upvotes. I'm one of the few self-taught tech employees I've met at AWS. And I'm consistently told (during yearly reviews and casually) that my ability to communicate tech issues simply to both tech and non-tech people is my 'super power'. Lots of CS grads who went immediately to a high-paid CS positions have no clue how to distill complex topics into jargon-free statements that are readily understood. And this lack of self-awareness (i.e. they don't understand that they're using specialized terms and/or skills) bleeds into everything they do. I can see a bunch of engineers sitting in a review meeting all agreeing 'This is simple math. Let's do it!' Unless there's someone from a non-tech background in the meeting, there's unlikely to be someone saying 'Uh, our audience is people wanting a place to sleep. We shouldn't gate our service with math.'