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I was banned from the hCaptcha accessibility account for not being blind (2023)

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Re: I was banned from the hCaptcha accessibility account for not being blind (2023)

#141

Post by Thoreandan »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #106
mapt wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is another option. CAPTCHA is useful only when it is costly to solve. It is a costly signal that this is a real person, or at least is more than 1/10^9th of a real person (you're not running a fully automated spam system). The postal service also has costs - everybody that wants to move something through the postal service needs to buy a stamp. Transport fees are a 'natural' way to moderate traffic and deter sp…

This sounds like the same argument that was made for about 10 years (2000 to 2010) that micropayments would save traditional (print) media in a digital world. It didn't work due to market fragmentation and friction to make a payment. And, the reality of your fancy idea is that normie users would turn away if they made a mistake on the CAPTCHA and were suddenly presented with a screen "charging" them one pence.

Relevant Penny Arcade comic responding to the proposal that micropayments will save comic artists - https://pennyarcade.fandom.com/wiki/June_22,_2001

Re: I was banned from the hCaptcha accessibility account for not being blind (2023)

#142

Post by wccrawford »

itishappy wrote: post #108
jstanley wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't think you could identify yellow buses without cultural knowledge? I think simply knowing "yellow" and "buses" would suffice.

Does DHL delivery via yellow busses?

Does anyone deliver anything except people via "busses"?

Re: I was banned from the hCaptcha accessibility account for not being blind (2023)

#143

Post by tredre3 »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #116
jchw wrote: post #41

I hope we can end the CAPTCHA experiment soon. It didn't work. Phone verification isn't good either, but for as much as I hate phone verification at least it actually raises the cost of spamming somewhat. CAPTCHA does not. Almost all turnkey CAPTCHA services can be solved for pennies. Solving the problems of SPAM and malicious traffic will be challenging... I am worried it will come down to three possible things: - A…

> Anonymity of users: validating someone's real-life identity sufficiently would make it possible to permanently ban malicious individuals and filter out bots with good effectiveness, but it will destroy anonymity online. In my opinion, literally untenable. I see this point constantly made on the echo chamber that is known as HackerNews. The average normie user does not care about anonymity, nor privacy, on the Inter…

> Are there any highly developed nations that allow complete strangers with any nationality to buy and use a mobile phone without showing a national ID? I don't know any, or they will all soon be gone.

I regularly (1-2x per year) buy prepaid SIMs in Canada, USA, and Japan. None of them require an ID and I often even pay cash.

I'm sure you are right that they'll eventually be requiring ID, but you are wrong to imply that these countries aren't highly developed.

Re: I was banned from the hCaptcha accessibility account for not being blind (2023)

#144

Post by thayne »

mapt wrote: post #93
jchw wrote: post #41

I hope we can end the CAPTCHA experiment soon. It didn't work. Phone verification isn't good either, but for as much as I hate phone verification at least it actually raises the cost of spamming somewhat. CAPTCHA does not. Almost all turnkey CAPTCHA services can be solved for pennies. Solving the problems of SPAM and malicious traffic will be challenging... I am worried it will come down to three possible things: - A…

There is another option. CAPTCHA is useful only when it is costly to solve. It is a costly signal that this is a real person, or at least is more than 1/10^9th of a real person (you're not running a fully automated spam system). The postal service also has costs - everybody that wants to move something through the postal service needs to buy a stamp. Transport fees are a 'natural' way to moderate traffic and deter sp…

> The postal service also has costs

I don't know about you but even with this cost about 90% of the physical mail I receive is junk mail.

> Sensible ones, if every spam email or login guess costs even 1 penny it becomes prohibitive for most fully automated spam applications.

Do you have a solution for transaction costs? How do you pay a penny without having to pay more than that for the transfer of funds?

Re: I was banned from the hCaptcha accessibility account for not being blind (2023)

#145

Post by KETHERCORTEX »

anotherhue wrote: post #18
jerf wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember that from hCaptcha's point of view, by this point they've probably dealt with hundreds of other people claiming that they are blind when they really aren't, so their bots will work. This isn't a defense, just an explanation... but it is also an explanation of why the entire idea of "we'll not give blind people a way past the CAPTCHA but just give a pass to 'real' blind people so we can pass ADA", which is th…

> If you had a system for completely accurately identifying characteristics like "who is blind" in the presence of extremely hostile attacks on the system, you'd have something far more valuable than the CAPTCHA system itself! You are unfortunately describing worldcoin.

Worldcoin? Government issued auth service is a viable option too. Just get some flag like "isBlind" in it. Disabled status is granted by the government after all.

Re: I was banned from the hCaptcha accessibility account for not being blind (2023)

#146

Post by AnthonyMouse »

jchw wrote: post #41

I hope we can end the CAPTCHA experiment soon. It didn't work. Phone verification isn't good either, but for as much as I hate phone verification at least it actually raises the cost of spamming somewhat. CAPTCHA does not. Almost all turnkey CAPTCHA services can be solved for pennies. Solving the problems of SPAM and malicious traffic will be challenging... I am worried it will come down to three possible things: - A…

> validating someone's real-life identity sufficiently would make it possible to permanently ban malicious individuals and filter out bots with good effectiveness, but it will destroy anonymity online. In my opinion, literally untenable.

Not only untenable because of the privacy invasion but also because there are too many users who are willing to click on whatever for a chance to win a prize and thereby authorize use of their identity for spamming.

> approaches like Web Environment Integrity and Private Access Tokens

That stuff never works because the spammers only have to break one model of one popular device. The people proposing it are snake oil salesmen or platform companies that want to use it for lock-in, because spammers spend the resources to break the system but normal users won't put up with the inconvenience, which locks out competitors and interoperability.

> Accountability of network operators

This largely already happens. Disreputable IP blocks get banned. But then you get a botnet with users on ISPs with varying levels of willingness to do something about it and the ones that do something about it still can't do it instantaneously and some of the ones that don't care are in jurisdictions you can't control but are also too big to block.

The best solution is probably some kind of "pay something in money/cryptocurrency/proof of work to create an account" because normal users need a small number accounts kept for long periods of time but spammers need a large number of accounts that get banned almost immediately, which is exactly the sort of asymmetric cost structure that results in a functioning system.

Re: I was banned from the hCaptcha accessibility account for not being blind (2023)

#148

Post by ta1243 »

slater wrote: post #39
ta1243 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry I live in the west, what's a "crosswalk" Did you mean to say > not everyone lives in the USA Other things I don't have a clue about - a fire hydrant, yellow taxis, yellow buses (Obviously I do, because of American cultural imperialism through things like Captchas which mean the world has to understand American cultural touchstones)

Please enter your five-digit ZIP code

Which you can then compress into a postcode file

#internationalisation

https://www.reddit.com/r/CasualUK/comments/12cwylk/microsoft...

Re: I was banned from the hCaptcha accessibility account for not being blind (2023)

#149

Post by sml156 »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #70
dizhn wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I routinely have problems with closeup images. To this day I don't know how much of the object I should be selecting? Also what is a traffic light? Is the pole part of it or not? Motorcycles seem to be hard too. Once it showed me a picture of steps nothing but steps. I think I marked like 15 boxes.

> To this day I don't know how much of the object I should be selecting? Also what is a traffic light? Is the pole part of it or not? Motorcycles seem to be hard too. I have always assumed this was purposefully ambiguous. The right answer is whatever a majority of humans will answer when presented with the same picture.

I don't think the majority of people on earth would base all their captchas on things only found in America

Re: I was banned from the hCaptcha accessibility account for not being blind (2023)

#150

Post by awbvious »

jchw wrote: post #41

I hope we can end the CAPTCHA experiment soon. It didn't work. Phone verification isn't good either, but for as much as I hate phone verification at least it actually raises the cost of spamming somewhat. CAPTCHA does not. Almost all turnkey CAPTCHA services can be solved for pennies. Solving the problems of SPAM and malicious traffic will be challenging... I am worried it will come down to three possible things: - A…

" Anonymity of users: validating someone's real-life identity sufficiently would make it possible to permanently ban malicious individuals and filter out bots with good effectiveness, but it will destroy anonymity online. In my opinion, literally untenable. "

What about zero knowledge proofs? Those with typical cryptocurrency wallets could leverage existing extensions. Everyone else can download an open source extension that sends the proof and an open source way to verify proofs but is unrelated to cryptocurrency. While a robustly decentralized chain like Bitcoin and Ethereum would be a good place to verify proofs, no reason a non-cryptocurrency solution can't also be avaliable as well for the cryptocurrency adverse. And for the tech adverse, a phone number to call/text to walk the person through sending the proof via phone that would cost a tiny bit--and could also help the tech adverse with setting up an extension going forward?

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