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exerceo
1y

It is increasingly difficult to believe that Google CAPTCHAs are not deliberately made unsolvable.

Everyone hates CAPTCHA, that is nothing new. As most people know, CAPTCHA frequently whines "please try again" after the user provides the correct answer. Sometimes it shows "Please select all matching images." when no new images with the named subject exist. However, now Google is taking it to a new level.

After clicking, the pictures take five seconds to fade to white and the new pictures take another five seconds to fade in. And CAPTCHA challenges have an expiry duration of two minutes. This causes CAPTCHAs to expire before it is possible to solve them.

Does Google think I am not a human because I don't have the time to waste whack-a-moling random StreetView pictures?

I have a feeling that Google is laughing at us for wasting efforts solving CAPTCHAs that are not meant to be solved.

rant

recaptcha
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  • 6
    1y
    Captchas are meant to be partially solved.

    They usually give you a part to be solved (to check you are human) and another part that doesn't matter if solved or not cuz you are just labeling stuff for ML algos.
  • 2
    1y
    @Nanos I suppose the last one was some kind of dating app.. (I couldn't imagine anything else where people would go along with that..)

    It will be "fun" when all their shit leaks, likely enough information for some quite serious blackmailing and/or (possibly deepfake enhanced) identity theft..
  • 3
    1y
    Captchas are made for bots to solve, don't bother if you're a human.
  • 3
    1y
    Your experience sounds like you are using TOR. Google hates TOR users and makes Captchas extra hard and sometimes even impossible to solve fro them. I am surfing unprotected from dragnet surveilance and normally have to only click that "i am not a robot" box to get through - not even seeing a captcha...
  • 5
    1y
    I say they deliberately bully people with privacy in mind and a bit of proper knowledge about tech.
    Prove me wrong.
  • 2
    1y
    @scor I hope Google will accidentally piss off the wrong people, some EU politicians and lawmakers, who will put an end to this insanity.

    "Sorry, Google. You don't get to annoy millions of internet users every day anymore with your unfunny whack-a-mole game."

    CAPTCHAs need to be solvable without massive headaches.
  • 1
    1y
    @Nanos Indeed, GDPR cookie boxes are annoying too. I sometimes hit "Esc" to stop loading before the site has a chance to shove that dreaded box into my face. However, far less annoying than CAPTCHAs.

    2023 Internet in a nutshell: https://pastebin.com/L5azpXXZ
  • 4
    1y
    EU forced a terribly written anti cookie law on us .

    The spirit of the law was sound. The implementation lousy.

    It didn't fix anything, but instead forced annoying popups on everyone which they accept anyway.

    The sensible thing would have been just fucking ban all cookies except functional ones.

    (Let's face it. Any non-functional cookie is tracking.)

    Tho they got one thing right. We can now bother (as a group) any murican company for any EU data going their way.

    Sure, they might just pull services from EU. I still think we'd live better without Google, Facebook, Amazon and what have you.
  • 0
    1y
    @CoreFusionX Many people have a habit for using Google services such as Maps for navigation. Where would they go?
  • 2
    1y
    @exerceo

    There are open implementations of maps.

    They might not have all of the features maps has (and that 99% of people don't even know how to use), but the basic functionality is there.
  • 1
    1y
    @exerceo something based on OSM?
  • 0
    1y
    @electrineer I like OpenStreetMap, but people using it have to forego satellite view.
  • 0
    342d
    @CoreFusionX "EU forced a terribly written anti cookie law on us ."

    For curiousity, how would you improve upon it?
  • 0
    341d
    @exerceo

    Wow, way to necro.

    Anyway. The EU cookie law is faulty because all it managed is forcing sites to display more annoying elements to warn about cookies that users consent to anyway without reading, ending only in their annoyance, without being at all effective in its true purpose.

    It would have been much easier to force browser vendors to offer a more centralized and more direct way to handle it, akin to https.

    You set a default in your browser, which should be by default functional only, and opt-in site by site through a common browser pop-up akin to camera or location permission, etc. something familiar to the user, and not customizable.

    If a website is found to use tracking cookies when not authorized, the browser displays a warning just like when the https certificate isn't valid.

    That would raise awareness and promote decent behavior from sites.
  • 0
    341d
    @CoreFusionX Thanks for the thorough answer. I just read comments on my older posts again and got curious.
  • 0
    341d
    @CoreFusionX
    I'm positive that it would be possible to implement that¹, but website owners / advertisers and browser vendors would need to be on board.

    At least the first group has all the incentive to go dark patterns galore and blame the EU.
    The biggest player in the second group has an obvious conflict of interest because they're also (and primarily!) in the first group.

    ¹ Going all the way to specify the technical implementation is usually not done in laws/regulation because it doesn't age well. IIRC for "cookie law" it mostly boils down to "don't save data to the user's device without consent".
  • 0
    341d
    @saucyatom

    I wholeheartedly agree. The whole point is "tell megacorps to abide", and tell anyone who wants to do business here, to abide.

    No one questions https, and it's pretty much the same mechanism.

    This is my own opinion, but if we want to keep Internet truly free (not without cost, as Englishmen like to say, libre), we need to push for these things.
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