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Captcha pictures force you to look at the world the way an AI does

clivethompson.medium.com

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Re: Captcha pictures force you to look at the world the way an AI does

#241

Post by ahrs »

mrkramer wrote: post #107
BoxOfRain wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not even necessarily the culture, it’s occasionally bit me as a native English speaker but not of American English. It’s a very minor annoyance on par with “colour” versus “color” when writing CSS but occasionally the automotive ones throw me off. For example, it took a captcha for me to know the central reservation is called the meridian over the Atlantic. I imagine it’s awful for people with English as a secon…

>I imagine it’s awful for people with English as a second language. Exactly captcha is too much English oriented. I don't have anything against American English or British English but majority of people on the internet are not native English speakers anymore or are not familiar with all the words and variants/nuances of English.

It's bad enough being a Brit and told to identify the pictures of Crosswalks. Most of the captcha use American English terms and in the UK nobody uses the term "Crosswalk", the first time I saw that specific captcha it took me a while to understand what it was asking me to identify especially since the quality of the photographs isn't particularly amazing.

Re: Captcha pictures force you to look at the world the way an AI does

#242

Post by innocenat »

andrepd wrote: post #71
mediocregopher wrote: post #7

For me a part of the melancholy feeling comes from the indignity of being forced to prove I'm human, and then the frustration at this stupid world we've created which requires me to do so which immediately follows the indignity. A website with captchas is like a retail store with metal detectors; it's not somewhere I feel welcome.

I'd be sort of okay with the general idea of proving I'm not a robot, you know what really rubs me the wrong way? It's how blatantly dishonest and disrespectful it is. Let me explain: google decides if you're human based on the data it has on you, such as your browsing profile and whether you're logged in to your Google account. Therefore it punishes you for trying to have privacy or refusing to use google services,…

What I hate more is US-centric of the CAPTCHA. Not only for reCAPTCHA, hCAPTCHA also failed in this regard.

I mentioned before, but once I got present with hCAPTCHA asking me to select 電車 (lit. electric train, but since all trains in big cities in Japan are electric train, 'train' in English also usually got translated as 電車). There's a picture of diesel train in the choice. Do I select it? idk.

Lately I have been presented with reCAPTCHA asking me to select トラック (lit. truck). Half of the choices are firetruck. Do I choose them? Because in Japanese (and probably most other languages too), we don't considered firetruck as 'truck'.

And the complaint that is more common: parking meter. I have literally never saw one, as it doesn't exist where I live. How do you expect me to chose the correct answers with noisy images?

Re: Captcha pictures force you to look at the world the way an AI does

#243

Post by someguy101010 »

egypturnash wrote: post #234
adamcharnock wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

fag is British slang cigarette, for any scandalised US folk reading this :-) (Does this still need saying?)

There’s always someone who is learning this for the first time!

Lucky 10k

Re: Captcha pictures force you to look at the world the way an AI does

#244

Post by thrwn_frthr_awy »

random_upvoter wrote: post #80
mediocregopher wrote: post #7

For me a part of the melancholy feeling comes from the indignity of being forced to prove I'm human, and then the frustration at this stupid world we've created which requires me to do so which immediately follows the indignity. A website with captchas is like a retail store with metal detectors; it's not somewhere I feel welcome.

So I'm member of a a religious (yogic) organisation and we have our own little chanting on Saturdays. When Covid broke out this obviously became impossible so we decided to have our meetings on Zoom instead. Now we have one woman in our group with some intellectual disability, a wonderful, sweet woman with the kindest heart in the world. Being 100% computer illiterate, she still decided to buy a tablet so she could f…

After years and years of captchas I still have no idea if I’m supposed to select all the poles for the traffic lights as well.

Re: Captcha pictures force you to look at the world the way an AI does

#245

Post by thrwn_frthr_awy »

mixedCase wrote: post #59

I've read the whole article, and I see so many comments agreeing or even adding detail to the post. Am I really in the minority if this kind of thing couldn't even cross my mind or feels like written by someone living in a parallel universe? A few poorly shot street photos are "unbearably depressing"? And there's even a detailed explanation breaking it down into points, each one feeling more alien than the last. They…

Some of us have very strict security settings that cause captchas to be very frequent and I believe more challenging.

I whitelist domains for cookies and I am not signed in to a Google account. These two things really can make the web a frustrating experience. I’ve lost out on campsites from US national parks because a captcha popped up when I tried to add the reservation. By the time I passed the multiple tests, all the campsites were taken.

Re: Captcha pictures force you to look at the world the way an AI does

#246

Post by honzzz »

mediocregopher wrote: post #7

For me a part of the melancholy feeling comes from the indignity of being forced to prove I'm human, and then the frustration at this stupid world we've created which requires me to do so which immediately follows the indignity. A website with captchas is like a retail store with metal detectors; it's not somewhere I feel welcome.

>> the indignity of being forced to prove I'm human

Indignity, that's it! I was never able to explain to myself the visceral hate I feel when I encounter captcha. I knew it could not be explained by the little work it requires, I knew there had to be more, I just couldn't put my finger on it. Indignity, and maybe the feeling of being used.

I have to admit, When I encounter captcha, I leave that page and never come back. I stopped using Pocket where I had hundreds of articles because of that. And when I encounter captcha on an especially bad day, I spend a few minutes clicking on incorrect images in an attempt to mess up their data.

Re: Captcha pictures force you to look at the world the way an AI does

#248

Post by toiletaccount »

mediocregopher wrote: post #7

For me a part of the melancholy feeling comes from the indignity of being forced to prove I'm human, and then the frustration at this stupid world we've created which requires me to do so which immediately follows the indignity. A website with captchas is like a retail store with metal detectors; it's not somewhere I feel welcome.

You mean you're bummed because you helped train your AI replacement for a few bytes of content that you forgot about in a couple of hours?

Re: Captcha pictures force you to look at the world the way an AI does

#249

Post by bamboozled »

random_upvoter wrote: post #80
mediocregopher wrote: post #7

For me a part of the melancholy feeling comes from the indignity of being forced to prove I'm human, and then the frustration at this stupid world we've created which requires me to do so which immediately follows the indignity. A website with captchas is like a retail store with metal detectors; it's not somewhere I feel welcome.

So I'm member of a a religious (yogic) organisation and we have our own little chanting on Saturdays. When Covid broke out this obviously became impossible so we decided to have our meetings on Zoom instead. Now we have one woman in our group with some intellectual disability, a wonderful, sweet woman with the kindest heart in the world. Being 100% computer illiterate, she still decided to buy a tablet so she could f…

I could not reasonably answer that question but I came close to saying "dear Kristine, throw this tablet in the garbage, none of this is going to make you happier"

This is a great and wise insight !

Re: Captcha pictures force you to look at the world the way an AI does

#250

Post by Cheezmeister »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #83
leesalminen wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bot can trivially generate TOTP tokens from a shared secret and receive/process incoming SMS to extract the code.

Then use the fact that I am a paying customer of Hilton’s for years to mark my account as a human. I have the Hilton credit card, I am a Diamond member, what else do they want? I know why they force me though, I use content blockers on macOS and iOS to block tracking and ads, but that is not a good reason.

I can think of few behaviours more human-like than using a content blocker. :)
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