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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

#131

Post by lamontcg »

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're forced to prove your human to an algorithm that trains a robot. It is a very boring dystopia.

As an aside, I enjoyed the use of the word "anomie" in the article.

Now I'm going to put on some sovietwave...

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

#132

Post by Cycl0ps »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #26
lotsofpulp wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand why websites need to use captcha. I do not understand why websites that have user accounts cannot offer the option of 2FA TOTP, or even SMS login to avoid captcha. Hilton.com is a big annoyance.

I really hate giving my phone number to any service, especially since i might need a second account there, or they might sell my data (or get hacked). I also hate sites that force you to do so... eg. twitter, where it decides it won't let you register without a phone number (making a new twitter account for a project), then won't allow you to use the phone number, because you already used it for your primary account.

Coincidentally I just made my first Twitter account. I can't remember the exact boxes you need to click but there is a way to sign up without giving out your phone number.

The issue is that it may flag your account as more suspicious. After three days I had my account flagged. I couldn't view tweets or use the account in any way. On log in it would redirect me and ask for my phone number for "verification". Funny how they can verify something they never received. It took about ten days for support to correct but my account is active again and they still don't know my phone number.

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

#133

Post by irrational »

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…

> How does a person come up with a whole emotional essay for this?

I feel this about so many different things. Anyone know if German has a word to describe this feeling?

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

#134

Post by judge2020 »

mkl wrote: post #125
pkulak wrote: post #36

I'd say it's because the North America, car-dominated, strip-mall-and-stroad landscape is depressing as hell. Open a map and drop yourself somewhere in Europe. I just did, and I feel like identifying crosswalks in a photo like this wouldn't be depressing at all: https://i.imgur.com/31AgNvs.png

I didn't understand "stroad" so I looked it up: > "Stroad" is a word we coined in 2013 to explain those dangerous, multi-laned thoroughfares you encounter in nearly every city, town, and suburb in America. They're what happens when a street (a place where people interact with businesses and residences, and where wealth is produced) gets combined with a road (a high-speed route between productive places). -- https://w…

The different words for pavement became separate categories as the culture started to demand an easier way to add context to what you’re saying. English is very efficient in that context is often assumed or hidden in the different meanings of the words.

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

#136

Post by mkl »

mrkramer wrote: post #96
LandR wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the security or trust that is even the issue. Even if the footage was never recorded or deleted instantly after. Even if it was 100% anonymous and 100% guaranteed secure, it still feels like some creepy dystopian nightmare. A system like this means we've catastrophically failed with technology. It's too dehumanizing. At this point, burn it all to the ground, we're done.

Then how we should solve captcha problem? Captcha should be easy to do for humans, easy to verify but hard to solve for bots. It should be humane and happy. How to do it?

It's easy for a bot to provide a pre-recorded or generated video of someone waving, and pronouncing a sentence is much harder for many humans than for bots. I don't think having to prove you're human will ever be a happy experience.

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

#137

Post by mrkramer »

dunnevens wrote: post #123
mrkramer wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you want us to DDoS the captcha networks? Hmm is that even legal? But it would be somewhat cool if millions of people starting failing captcha on purpose it would be something like decentralized volunteer mass ddos attack.

Wouldn't be a DDoS. At least, I don't think it would. It would just be simply people refusing to work on captchas more than a certain amount. Basically, if you make me hunt for bikes and there's more than 3 of them, then I'm not doing it. More akin to a deliberate labor slowdown than a DDoS, or even a strike.

How do you know how many bikes are out there in total? And what is a purpose of a deliberate labor slowdown if you are going to get more captcha work if you do not finish your current one.

I mentioned DDOS because every time you fail to satisfy captcha criteria website requests a new batch of captcha for you; in that way you would be constantly requesting a new captcha if you would be deliberately failing your current one or as you described imposing a "hunt limit" upon yourself.

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

#138

Post by judge2020 »

walrus01 wrote: post #129

If you want to see a lot of captchas, try browsing with Firefox mobile with ublock origin installed. It's sad how many people design for 100% chrome. To the point that being a stock Firefox user agent that doesn't receive all ads shows up as if you're a bot scraping the site.

It all comes down to how lazy (or perhaps cost-conscious) the developers of the website are. Most traffic is Chrome and Safari, so running those two tests covers nearly 85% of users[0] and most other browsers like Firefox make an effort to fix incompatibilities with Chrome. It’s the same for captchas - most people aren’t running in anonymous mode, and when they are, their IP is usually part of a major ISP and thus reputation can be partially assumed by the IP instead of browser cookie. It often doesn’t make sense to spend extra money just so to appease something like 5-10% of internet users (and might be less than 1% of a company’s actual customer base).

0: https://gs.statcounter.com/

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

#139

Post by derefr »

> The one exception is, improbably, palm trees. I keep on getting CAPTCHAs asking me to recognize palm trees. I have no idea what’s going on there! Did, like, a Waymo car once slam into a palm tree?

Palm trees look kind of like street signs, and show up in places street signs also show up. To recognize street signs, an AI needs both examples of street signs, and examples of things that look like street signs, but aren't.

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

#140

Post by OJFord »

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…

> Is it because I live in a third world country

Until I got there I was going to suggest that it was because you were too used to the scenes depicted - I'm not sure about the author (NYT contributor suggests but I think doesn't necessitate that he's American) but I think many Europeans find the scenes depicted quite unfamiliar and not in a particularly pleasant/intriguing/exciting way. The way towns & cities (to a large extent I'd even argue it seems North America doesn't have towns in any recognisable way) are organised is just different, designed around cars and big infrastructure, car parks and 'box stores' over high streets, etc.

I might not independently go as far as (or at least not recognise it as) 'depressing', but they're certainly not particularly 'nice' or 'pleasing' images to me either.

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