Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the vast majority of which will not be empathically awful Yeah, most of the time it's "just" really, really obnoxious, not to mention coercive in a way that aligns with Google's interests. Thanks, Google. > How, in your opinion, should Google have handled the matter in a way that does not give spammers or other abusive users ways to get around the measure? "Our anti-spam systems believe that you might be a robot. Y…
In my opinion and experience, ReCAPTCHA isn't really, really obnoxious most of the time. I suspect that most of the time it trips up bots who have no emotional experiences whatsoever. Most of my personal encounters with it involve solving no puzzles whatsoever. With that in mind, I expect humans and their completely real reactions might not be the default case. Of course, this is speculative, as I do not have any kin…
I'll bite: maybe it's good at identifying obedient drones and letting them through :)
It trips up the normies in my life often enough that I suspect being technically inclined is actually a net advantage because it makes you quick to detect the problem and quick to apply workarounds. Those advantages are significant enough to outweigh even the cost of the semi-regular dance where I try to protect myself and Google jerks my chain.
> Have you considered
The fact that I phrased my proposal as a tradeoff should have strongly hinted that I did, in fact, consider.
> Wouldn't that remove any real gains from being vague with tips & tricks?
One bit of information -- locked vs not -- is hardly the same as disclosing the inner workings, or even the information inputs, of the classifier, and smart botters have access to that bit of information anyway because they've built a gaslight detector by leveraging their legions of diverse bots and endless supply of dirt cheap human labor.
Gaslighting humans is really bad. A minimal courtesy would only cost a sliver of efficacy, and ReCAPTCHA still rejects it. That decision earns it the bad will directed its way.