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Re-captcha is about google exercising monopoly power to try and force you to use their browser and let them track you. It has little to do with finding stopsign

Re-captcha is about google exercising monopoly power to try and force you to use their browser and let them track you. It has little to do with finding stopsigns or whatever. It would be cool to see that problem addressed, i.e. allow me to use the internet normally without a browser and privacy settings that google endorses. Incidentally, in almost all cases, if I'm faced with a recaptcha, I just don't do the thing. I have foregone purchases and charity donations, and not used products, because organizations care so little about their customers that they think making us solve a puzzle before we give them money is acceptable.

crakenzak 4y ago
Seems like forgoing charity donations over something like a recaptcha is an incredibly bizarre hill to die on. The main purpose of recaptcha is to prevent bots from abusing services, and has much less to do with exercising “monopoly power to … track you”.
- listenallyall 4y ago
  > The main purpose of recaptcha is to prevent bots from abusing services It's funny when people think they are adding to the conversation by contradicting a thoughtful and interesting comment (even if it may be a bit conspiracy-theory-ish), by simply re-reciting the corporate line.
  - version_five 4y ago
    I call that sort of reply "coin operated" - there is some crude pattern recognition that goes on (dropping any subtlety or new information a parent comment may be providing) and a sort of pre-recorded viewpoint gets spit out. There are certain topics where it's very common
    - listenallyall 4y ago
      I think it also happens sometimes when the parent comment hits close to home... perhaps someone actually worked on implementing a feature for a few years and even from the inside never figured out the actual purpose of what was being built. That cognitive dissonance hits hard when an outsider points it out in black and white. "Wait, I built non-consensual tracking software? But nobody told me they would use it for that!!!"
  - jtbayly 4y ago
    I downvoted because I run several non-profit websites, and start without any captcha’s by default. But forms always end up getting spammed, and then I have to add some protection. This is literally why captchas exist in the first place, as well as why so many sites have them. Google came along and offered a convenient, free version, so many people started to use it, although I don’t. Why Google decided to offer it is possibly what you claim, but that changes nothing about why the nonprofit makes use of it.
    - version_five 4y ago
      > free It's not free. It increases friction, and at least in my case, results in abandoned transactions. I'm not well versed in the different options for spam protection (or the attacks) but I do know that most merchants don't make their users solve a puzzle, especially at a critical point along the purchase workflow where is it most likely to get derailed. The fact that google is (probably unintentionally) particularly appealing to small providers or charities, pretending they offer a "free" product, makes it even worse. Edit: not an endorsement, but elsewhere in the discussion someone posted a link to cloudflare's captcha solution, which they say specifically addresses the privacy and annoyingness concerns of Google's captcha. So there are options: https://www.cloudflare.com/en-ca/products/turnstile/ https://www.cloudflare.com/en-ca/products/turnstile/ (I'm not actually familiar with this, it may have a downside I don't know about) (Also, disagreeing with something is generally a poor reason to downvote. It's much better to have a discussion, and I appreciate your comment)
      - jtbayly 4y ago
        > It's not free. True enough. That’s why I don’t use it. Google’s solution is absolutely awful, and I’m positive you aren’t the only one abandoning important flows on non-profit websites because of it.
    - ajsnigrutin 4y ago
      Anything that wastes users time is not really free.
  - democra 4y ago
lagt_t 4y ago
Isn't recaptcha browser agnostic?
- robin_reala 4y ago
  No, or at least, if it is now, it historically hasn’t been (Firefox in particular suffered from this due to default-blocking other signals that Google used). They also had “having a Google account cookie” as a signal, which is a pretty nasty abuse of power.

crakenzak 4y ago

Seems like forgoing charity donations over something like a recaptcha is an incredibly bizarre hill to die on. The main purpose of recaptcha is to prevent bots from abusing services, and has much less to do with exercising “monopoly power to … track you”.

listenallyall 4y ago
> The main purpose of recaptcha is to prevent bots from abusing services It's funny when people think they are adding to the conversation by contradicting a thoughtful and interesting comment (even if it may be a bit conspiracy-theory-ish), by simply re-reciting the corporate line.
- version_five 4y ago
  I call that sort of reply "coin operated" - there is some crude pattern recognition that goes on (dropping any subtlety or new information a parent comment may be providing) and a sort of pre-recorded viewpoint gets spit out. There are certain topics where it's very common
  - listenallyall 4y ago
    I think it also happens sometimes when the parent comment hits close to home... perhaps someone actually worked on implementing a feature for a few years and even from the inside never figured out the actual purpose of what was being built. That cognitive dissonance hits hard when an outsider points it out in black and white. "Wait, I built non-consensual tracking software? But nobody told me they would use it for that!!!"
- jtbayly 4y ago
  I downvoted because I run several non-profit websites, and start without any captcha’s by default. But forms always end up getting spammed, and then I have to add some protection. This is literally why captchas exist in the first place, as well as why so many sites have them. Google came along and offered a convenient, free version, so many people started to use it, although I don’t. Why Google decided to offer it is possibly what you claim, but that changes nothing about why the nonprofit makes use of it.
  - version_five 4y ago
    > free It's not free. It increases friction, and at least in my case, results in abandoned transactions. I'm not well versed in the different options for spam protection (or the attacks) but I do know that most merchants don't make their users solve a puzzle, especially at a critical point along the purchase workflow where is it most likely to get derailed. The fact that google is (probably unintentionally) particularly appealing to small providers or charities, pretending they offer a "free" product, makes it even worse. Edit: not an endorsement, but elsewhere in the discussion someone posted a link to cloudflare's captcha solution, which they say specifically addresses the privacy and annoyingness concerns of Google's captcha. So there are options: https://www.cloudflare.com/en-ca/products/turnstile/ https://www.cloudflare.com/en-ca/products/turnstile/ (I'm not actually familiar with this, it may have a downside I don't know about) (Also, disagreeing with something is generally a poor reason to downvote. It's much better to have a discussion, and I appreciate your comment)
    - jtbayly 4y ago
      > It's not free. True enough. That’s why I don’t use it. Google’s solution is absolutely awful, and I’m positive you aren’t the only one abandoning important flows on non-profit websites because of it.
  - ajsnigrutin 4y ago
    Anything that wastes users time is not really free.
- democra 4y ago

lagt_t 4y ago

Isn't recaptcha browser agnostic?

robin_reala 4y ago
No, or at least, if it is now, it historically hasn’t been (Firefox in particular suffered from this due to default-blocking other signals that Google used). They also had “having a Google account cookie” as a signal, which is a pretty nasty abuse of power.