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Google’s new reCAPTCHA has a dark side

fastcompany.com

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Re: Google’s new reCAPTCHA has a dark side

#451

Post by laughinghan »

benreesman wrote: post #364
benreesman wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment adds a lot to the conversation, so I don’t want to be more contrary than necessary. It’s nonetheless a shame that it’s so universally misunderstood how ad-supported megacorps make their money that even highly sophisticated users of the web still talk about the value of personal data (source: I ran Facebook’s ads backend for years). Much like the highest information-gain feature for the future price of a…

I am falling behind replying to all the comments that this has generated. For the record I am inked all over with anti-equation group stuff: I agree that these companies are too big and powerful (and I would know). I just don’t see a solution with the present judiciary. If anyone has a bright idea my email is in my profile. I will thank you all in advance for not shooting the messenger.

Your HN profile appears to be blank. I think I found your email on GitHub though?

For the record, many of your comments here have been thoughtful, and I've upvoted them. I've also downvoted many where instead of responding to other people's thoughtful comments, you just insult them instead. Those are also the ones that other people seem to be downvoting. I don't think anyone is shooting the messenger here.

Re: Google’s new reCAPTCHA has a dark side

#452

Post by benreesman »

saagarjha wrote: post #414
benreesman wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GitHub is always at your disposal. NV doesn’t sell the consumer cards to enterprises. So on AWS a multi-GPU box will cost you about 12 dollars an hour. If you can disambiguate, let’s just say 85% of profiles absent IP or cookies, well I think you just broke the academic SOTA and I’d love to make some calls. Cheat sheet: you can’t.

> GitHub is always at your disposal. NV doesn’t sell the consumer cards to enterprises. So on AWS a multi-GPU box will cost you about 12 dollars an hour. I don’t see how this is related to the claim, since it doesn’t solve the problem. But the advertising company that I let run code on my website will certainly do the job pretty well, I’d say.

I was pointing out that it’s a commercially applicable of a very strongly worded claim that I know would be expensive to test because I’m optimizing GPU intensive code at the moment. I don’t know where in this thread I generated so much ill will for trying to add knowledge to the conversation, but I’m not making shit up.

Re: Google’s new reCAPTCHA has a dark side

#453

Post by benreesman »

snlnspc wrote: post #422
benreesman wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don’t think that lawyer fees scale linearly with regulation complexity you’re either an early Uber employee or mistaken. When you’ve built a social consumer business in Europe that is profitable after compliance, send me a term sheet.

I enjoyed reading what you said as a different perspective on the backend of ad technology vs privacy up until this comment thread. I didn't build a profitable social consumer business in Europe after compliance, but I was part of a team that implemented compliance for a long existing company within the US due to them having clients and client's clients in Europe. They're profitable. Do you want my term sheet? Or are…

As I’ve mentioned I think elsewhere in the thread I left that business in no small part because it didn’t feel right to be in anymore. It was at a significant cost. I’m really lost on where in the thread I started to sound like a shill for business practices I (knowledgeably) don’t care for.

Re: Google’s new reCAPTCHA has a dark side

#454

Post by benreesman »

saagarjha wrote: post #415
benreesman wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not making a moral argument for the surveillance state, I wear Curve25519 on one arm and the word “citizenfour” on the other. I agree that there is a vast and almost impossible to regulate overreach by these companies. Your argument is extremely compelling. But when HN users complain about being spied on I smell a FAANG rejection letter.

> when HN users complain about being spied on I smell a FAANG rejection letter I work at a FAANG: here’s my complaint about being spied on.

So your comments should be at the top. You’re knowledgeable on the subject and even if we disagree that should be upweighted in a perfect world.

Re: Google’s new reCAPTCHA has a dark side

#455

Post by quickthrower2 »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #224
quickthrower2 wrote: post #128

Next step: recapcha pro. $29 a year (by CC or Googlecoin of course!) to browse the web free of recapchas and be able to use your favourite sites again.

$29 to spam the web to my heart's content? I'll take infinity of them!

You did read the ToS? It can be cancelled any time for any reason, and you'll never find out why.

Re: Google’s new reCAPTCHA has a dark side

#456

Post by benreesman »

cyphar wrote: post #434
benreesman wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a reasonable argument in there, but it applies to any world in which digital cameras are cheap. This is in a sense the worst kind of argument: superficially correct but really meant to tap into a popular groundswell of sentiment. The question isn’t “can FB use an off-the-shelf CNN to identify me personally” but rather: “If it weren’t FB who would be doing it instead?” and: “Should cheap digital cameras be ill…

> The question is “If it weren’t FB who would be doing it instead?” [...] “Should cheap digital cameras be illegal?” Those are a complete non-sequitur. Facebook (and Google) analyse every single photo that goes through their system with state-of-the-art ML (it's so good that it almost beat humans at matching faces ~5 years ago). This is a scale of surveillance which the human race has never encountered before in our…

I think you overestimate the degree to which SOTA computer vision is applied to a lot of images online, and I think bringing East Germany into it is pretty out of line.

Re: Google’s new reCAPTCHA has a dark side

#457

Post by OrgNet »

saagarjha wrote: post #429
OrgNet wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use pretty standard extensions... uBlockO, decentral eyes, smart referrer... I just wish that companies would stop using Google's reCAPTCHA service. Also my IP address rarely changes and I don't think that any malicious traffic is coming from it. And I have Comcast, so I hope that they didn't blacklist all of us... (I did talk bad about Google a few times though, maybe that's it)

Those aren’t extensions that an average user would install.

oh... so i should not be able to use any websites because of the extensions I use?

Re: Google’s new reCAPTCHA has a dark side

#458

Post by OrgNet »

bduerst wrote: post #440
saagarjha wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those aren’t extensions that an average user would install.

Just Smart Referer alone is a likely culprit. Masking or having no referer is a prime attribute for low-level bots.

wow... Google is pretty retarded if that is what they mostly rely on...

Re: Google’s new reCAPTCHA has a dark side

#459

Post by benreesman »

laughinghan wrote: post #451
benreesman wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am falling behind replying to all the comments that this has generated. For the record I am inked all over with anti-equation group stuff: I agree that these companies are too big and powerful (and I would know). I just don’t see a solution with the present judiciary. If anyone has a bright idea my email is in my profile. I will thank you all in advance for not shooting the messenger.

Your HN profile appears to be blank. I think I found your email on GitHub though? For the record, many of your comments here have been thoughtful, and I've upvoted them. I've also downvoted many where instead of responding to other people's thoughtful comments, you just insult them instead. Those are also the ones that other people seem to be downvoting. I don't think anyone is shooting the messenger here.

I am not experienced at replying to several comments a minute, I’m sure I made some errors in judgement during that process, but I think this thread is as active as it is because people want to know how this shit works, not because I’m the apex troll of pushing people’s buttons. FB and Google are in a dubious market position here but they take a lot of flack on HN for how highly they pay and how hard the interview used to be.

Re: Google’s new reCAPTCHA has a dark side

#460

Post by thekyle »

zymhan wrote: post #303
thekyle wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Since reCAPTCHA v3 scripts must be loaded on every page of a site, you must send Google your browsing history and detailed data about how you interact with sites in order to access basic services on the internet, such as paying your bills, or accessing healthcare services. I don't believe this is true. You only need to include the JavaScript on pages which actively use the reCAPTCHA score. For example, you might on…

Did you read the article? > To make this risk-score system work accurately, website administrators are supposed to embed reCaptcha v3 code on all of the pages of their website, not just on forms or log-in pages.

Google recommends that you include the code on multiple pages, however, it makes it clear in the official docs that this is absolutely NOT required for the reCAPTCHA v3 system to work.

So if the article stated that websites were required to put the code on multiple pages (as the comment I replied to did) then the article is factually incorrect.

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