Why are captchas even a thing still?
If folks want to scrape something or build an automation around something, then why not let them do it? They still have to respect the system they're logging in. Not to mention the privacy perk of not exposing your visitors to some captcha service with a dozen or more data subprocessors.
I was banned from the hCaptcha accessibility account for not being blind (2023)
21–30 of 277 posts
Re: I was banned from the hCaptcha accessibility account for not being blind (2023)
#22Some captchas are getting pretty discriminatory, not everyone lives in the West and can identify the objects they are asking you to. Another recent one sticks out where they asked me to pick a shape as the same number of conoids on screen. If you ask people on a street what a conoids I bet a significant amount will give you blank looks Also at least now I know some people call those markings crosswalks
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)
Re: I was banned from the hCaptcha accessibility account for not being blind (2023)
#23[deleted]
Re: I was banned from the hCaptcha accessibility account for not being blind (2023)
#24I hope AI stuff makes captchas completely obsolete soon. I am sick of them. The cure is worse than the disease.
But surely, it's only going to get worse: it will force the de-anonymization of the internet. You already have to provide a phone number for many services. If websites can't trust that their users are authentic they will probably institute even more intrusive checks. I haven't been optimistic about the future of technology for a while now. :'(
In the future I think we will again go to "notarization"/"attestation" of the operating system / hardware.
Essentially, the manufacturer of the device + operating system will generate a unique signature per each device, and web browsers will be able to access it.
Re: I was banned from the hCaptcha accessibility account for not being blind (2023)
#25The title kind of makes it appear far less of a problem than it actually is, because according to the article, hCaptcha made multiple rude and evidence-free accusations of lying despite the author actually being blind.
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…
This is a problem so chronic across so many fields that I wish there was single term to describe it.
User POV :"Wow, provider is a really shitty entity and had no respect for my legitimate problem."
Provider POV: "We get a huge number of illegitimate claims identical to legitimate ones regularly, the system would collapse if we didn't do heavy triage, the problem is the level of abuse, not a moral bankruptcy on our part."
I suppose "this is why we can't have nice things" captures some of it.
Re: I was banned from the hCaptcha accessibility account for not being blind (2023)
#26The title kind of makes it appear far less of a problem than it actually is, because according to the article, hCaptcha made multiple rude and evidence-free accusations of lying despite the author actually being blind.
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…
> As big as Google, Facebook, or Amazon are, they would struggle under the load of trying to create a system for determining who is "truly" blind... and that's still true if we ignore questions like exactly what "blind" is anyhow.
In several countries, the government issues certificates of blindness [1] which grant access to certain extra types of support. We don't want severely vision-impaired people being forced to drive, after all!
So there are legal standards for what exactly blind is, and certificates.
The question is whether tech companies are inclined to hire enough people to wrangle the paperwork involved in checking such certificates, worldwide.
[1] https://www.mass.gov/info-details/benefits-for-people-who-ar...
Re: I was banned from the hCaptcha accessibility account for not being blind (2023)
#27It's quite unpleasantly often that I hear stories about accessibility accommodations being removed by someone considering themselves the sole arbiter of disability.
Re: I was banned from the hCaptcha accessibility account for not being blind (2023)
#28Why are captchas even a thing still? If folks want to scrape something or build an automation around something, then why not let them do it? They still have to respect the system they're logging in. Not to mention the privacy perk of not exposing your visitors to some captcha service with a dozen or more data subprocessors.
Captchas are used for many things, and the reason they are still a thing is because they mostly work. Especially fingerprinting invisible captchas.
Try having a login form without a captcha and you'll realize you are capturing 100s of users every day that require you to send out a "please confirm your email address" email for each of them for no good reason.
> They still have to respect the system they're logging in.
Your trust in people is admirable, but in my experience running anything on the internet you'll realize that intentionally or not people will bombard your system until it falls over.
Re: I was banned from the hCaptcha accessibility account for not being blind (2023)
#29Why are captchas even a thing still? If folks want to scrape something or build an automation around something, then why not let them do it? They still have to respect the system they're logging in. Not to mention the privacy perk of not exposing your visitors to some captcha service with a dozen or more data subprocessors.
I had to add a captcha to a registration page a couple years ago. Bots were signing up for thousands of fake accounts with other people’s email addresses. The email confirmation we sent would then get reported as spam since the recipient didn’t sign up for our service. Our email provider suspended our account for high spam reports.
Re: I was banned from the hCaptcha accessibility account for not being blind (2023)
#30Some captchas are getting pretty discriminatory, not everyone lives in the West and can identify the objects they are asking you to. Another recent one sticks out where they asked me to pick a shape as the same number of conoids on screen. If you ask people on a street what a conoids I bet a significant amount will give you blank looks Also at least now I know some people call those markings crosswalks
Also, if you use a larger minimum font size often the text describing the thing you are supposed to select is under the image and unreadable. With hCaptcha it varies depending on the size of the popup window with the captcha and Google seems to reliably show just the top (barely enough to figure it out most of the time).