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Why do you do this? While I can appreciate the technical achievement, you know most users of forums and imageboards don’t want any AI content at all.
by HeckFeck 2y ago
Why do you do this?
While I can appreciate the technical achievement, you know most users of forums and imageboards don’t want any AI content at all.
- KomoD 2y ago> Why do you do this? Money, obviously. I'd also do it for $30-150k/year > you know most users of forums and imageboards don’t want any AI content at all. He's not creating or posting any "AI content"?
- HeckFeck 2y agoOkay, but you know his actions are enabling more AI content and spam to proliferate? I hardly think he is making that much money just because legitimate users don't want to fill in a captcha.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- brookst 2y agoIt’s very easy to opine about the ethics others should have. Different when it’s you and your family and a comparatively easy effort will make a material difference in quality of life. And especially when you know ghe market need will be met by someone else anyway.
- IWeldMelons 2y agoIf someone is making a brazen statement of being "a bad guy because 80K is not enough, and could not find anything decent for those extra $30K" what kind of treatment would they expect?
- xp84 2y agoI’d argue that someone cracking CAPTCHAs has a lot less dirty hands than someone who works in an actually scummy industry like US health insurance. Those companies literally kill people by denying them care to pinch pennies. This guy might cause a little more spam on the already useless mess that is YouTube comments. Who cares. I’d take the money, too.
- IWeldMelons 2y agoTypical US-centric way of thinking. If your healthcare system is crippled it does not justify making internet mess for everyone else in the world.
- lostlogin 2y agoI’d have suggested adtech before health insurers.
- RHSman2 2y agoTobacco pays real well
- marcosdumay 2y agoTo be fair, there's a huge amount of people around here that work on the universal surveillance industry, and for many of them the alternative is way higher than 80k.
- HeckFeck 2y agoSo you get a bit richer for less effort... but how do you think moderating legions of spam posts affects the lives of independent website owners, who just want to create communities around the things they love? Or indeed the users, who have to wade through trash invading their threads? Or other legitimate users, who now have to answer captchas from CloudFlare just to access their favourite websites? Ultimately this is a parasitical element, choking the internet. It will kill the things it profits from. Many will give up running these sites, you walk away with your $100k, and no one can ever do it again... you've not created anything of value, but destroyed it.
- Jerrrry 2y agoHard to think anyone who can't solve a captcha is something other than a parasite. Parasites can solve captchas, people with accessibility issues and the poorest of people are the one being locked out.
- lostlogin 2y agoIt isn’t just those with accessibility problems that get stuck. Some are stupidly difficult- I’ve given up on one in recent times. Maybe my disability is CAPTCHA blindness.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- marcosdumay 2y agoCaptchas are not only for stopping people with disabilities anymore. They also stop people using non-approved browsers, people trying to stay anonymous, people coming from the wrong geographic areas...
- TZubiri 2y agoIf the AI has access to a credit card, but Mgulu from Nigeria doesn't, then the system doing the filtering might evolve to filter out the 'undesirable' rather than the non human.
- rad_gruchalski 2y agoSo says every drug dealer.
- qqqult 2y ago[flagged]
- gosub100 2y agoEveryone's got their price. I would certainly do dirty deeds myself for the right amount.
- reaperman 2y agoWe actually don’t take spam/fraud clients. Granted - there’s a bit of a delicate song+dance with each client, people who are doing spam/fraud usually know better than to admit it outright. Our group focuses on scraping for lightly-funded LLM startups who cant pay Reddit/X/etc API fees, and data aggregation for cottage industries (price comparison, etc) But a LOT of the people in our niche do fraud and spam, so we’re steeped in that culture whether we embrace it or reject it.
- vkou 2y agoHalf this forum works on filling the Internet with crap, and most of the other half work for industries that on the net are making the world a worse place, it's kind of table stakes for getting paid. Capitalism optimises for value to the customer, not for overall public good.
- Forgeties79 2y agoPeople who do jobs like that don’t really care about the impact
- Der_Einzige 2y agoBeing able to spam and mind control 4chan would be amazing just for personal reasons, let alone how juicy that is to governments around the world!
- lukas099 2y agoIt's working for the Russians.
- noprocrasted 2y agoThe percentage of captchas used to deter spam is probably a minority these days. A lot of captchas nowadays are used to prevent adversarial interoperability or the free flow of information. If you want to spam, you don't actually need to break many captchas. Just make your spam/scam/misinformation "engaging" enough and the social media platforms will host and promote your spam _for free_ and won't even ask a captcha.
- reaperman 2y agoThis precisely. Our clients are generally looking at adversarial interoperability. But the rhetoric around the assumption that I was doing it for spammers was also interesting, as well as being more closely related to TFA!