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Breaking the 4Chan CAPTCHA

nullpt.rs

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Re: Breaking the 4Chan CAPTCHA

#271

Post by lostlogin »

hamilyon2 wrote: post #208
noprocrasted wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because you can technically crack them doesn't mean they're useless. There's a significant amount of time, skill and effort that went into the solution from this post, and the end result doesn't generalize well (you'd have to start all over for a different kind of captcha). The vast majority of spammers would not be able to replicate this; those who do would either make money legitimately, or focus their skills…

Captchas are now useful to distinguish well-intentioned bots (they stop whenever they see captcha) from malicious ones, which solve them, but still behave a lot like bots. Well-intentional bots are first-class citizens

Do you complete the circle and do the good bot bad bot classification with a mod bot?

Re: Breaking the 4Chan CAPTCHA

#272

Post by drexlspivey »

jabroni_salad wrote: post #136
brian-armstrong wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes me wonder what comes next. Could we create a forum where every member must do a 15 minute video interview with a moderator? I know this "doesn't scale" but I think it could make for a funny gimmick.

private torrent trackers are/were doing that. It was really just to make sure you understood how p2p culture works and what the expectations are, and really easy to pass if you just followed a guide. However, I did see many people fail their interview.

The famous RED tracker has a full on technical interview asking about:

* Audio Formats

* Transcoding

* Spectral analysis

and more.

This is the interview prep website: https://interviewfor.red/en/index.html

Re: Breaking the 4Chan CAPTCHA

#273

Post by s777 »

tovej wrote: post #207
poincaredisk wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of memes and shitposting, I assume. /pol/ was always political, pro-trump, and according to some was even important enough to influence elections. I find that claim dubious, but it's true that many pro-trump memes (and memes in general) were created on 4chan.

/pol/ is 100% a big factor in the rising popularity of MAGA and far-right nationalist sentiment among young men

I know people personally who recently graduated high school and went down the 4chan rabbithole because they wanted to be "edgy", then they got comfortable with the extremely racist attitudes they were promoting

Re: Breaking the 4Chan CAPTCHA

#274

Post by matheusmoreira »

tovej wrote: post #219
krmboya wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not the rampant racism or sexism or simple misanthropy or outright calls to violence or overflowing hostility. Isn't that more easily solved by just not visiting the site in the first place?

This problem is a societal one, it mostly harms you indirectly by creating spaces for hateful ideas to spread, 4chan's harm is through the capacity to organize and strengthen hateful and harmful political movements. More socially conscious people not visiting the site only serves to create a stronger echo chamber.

The fact you think some ideas are "harmful" is exactly why humanity needs sites like these. We don't trust people like you to determine which ideas are "harmful" and which aren't, which ideas are worth spreading and which aren't. We want to see for ourselves, thank you very much.

We are especially interested in the ideas that people deem offensive enough to suppress. Are they actually wrong or are they just socially unacceptable? Whatever the truth is, it can't be learned from a place that suppresses discussion of it. Declaring the matter as settled and suppressing any opposing viewpoint is the very definition of an echo chamber.

Re: Breaking the 4Chan CAPTCHA

#275

Post by matheusmoreira »

raincole wrote: post #94
shortrounddev2 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They had a gigantic spam problem, captcha saved the site

- Obscure proprietary algorithm decides what you read - Obscure CAPTCHA and other anti-spam features - Pay to post Choose one.

Paying to post sounds like the only good solution. There is no privacy problem if they accept Monero.

Re: Breaking the 4Chan CAPTCHA

#276

Post by [deleted] »

Jerrrry wrote: post #235
HeckFeck wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you get a bit richer for less effort... but how do you think moderating legions of spam posts affects the lives of independent website owners, who just want to create communities around the things they love? Or indeed the users, who have to wade through trash invading their threads? Or other legitimate users, who now have to answer captchas from CloudFlare just to access their favourite websites? Ultimately this i…

Hard to think anyone who can't solve a captcha is something other than a parasite. Parasites can solve captchas, people with accessibility issues and the poorest of people are the one being locked out.

[deleted]

Re: Breaking the 4Chan CAPTCHA

#277

Post by jrflowers »

HeckFeck wrote: post #229
brookst wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s very easy to opine about the ethics others should have. Different when it’s you and your family and a comparatively easy effort will make a material difference in quality of life. And especially when you know ghe market need will be met by someone else anyway.

So you get a bit richer for less effort... but how do you think moderating legions of spam posts affects the lives of independent website owners, who just want to create communities around the things they love? Or indeed the users, who have to wade through trash invading their threads? Or other legitimate users, who now have to answer captchas from CloudFlare just to access their favourite websites? Ultimately this i…

> So you get a bit richer for less effort

If $150k/year is “a bit richer” for you you could simply offer to pay that poster that much in exchange for stopping.

Re: Breaking the 4Chan CAPTCHA

#278

Post by marcosdumay »

Jerrrry wrote: post #235
HeckFeck wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you get a bit richer for less effort... but how do you think moderating legions of spam posts affects the lives of independent website owners, who just want to create communities around the things they love? Or indeed the users, who have to wade through trash invading their threads? Or other legitimate users, who now have to answer captchas from CloudFlare just to access their favourite websites? Ultimately this i…

Hard to think anyone who can't solve a captcha is something other than a parasite. Parasites can solve captchas, people with accessibility issues and the poorest of people are the one being locked out.

Captchas are not only for stopping people with disabilities anymore. They also stop people using non-approved browsers, people trying to stay anonymous, people coming from the wrong geographic areas...

Re: Breaking the 4Chan CAPTCHA

#279

Post by marcosdumay »

IWeldMelons wrote: post #228
brookst wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s very easy to opine about the ethics others should have. Different when it’s you and your family and a comparatively easy effort will make a material difference in quality of life. And especially when you know ghe market need will be met by someone else anyway.

If someone is making a brazen statement of being "a bad guy because 80K is not enough, and could not find anything decent for those extra $30K" what kind of treatment would they expect?

To be fair, there's a huge amount of people around here that work on the universal surveillance industry, and for many of them the alternative is way higher than 80k.

Re: Breaking the 4Chan CAPTCHA

#280

Post by persnickety »

ryandrake wrote: post #214
reaperman wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, I do this type of AI development for solving CAPTCHAs. I can't get any real jobs that pay me for my more advanced skills. My primary sins were going to a second/third-tier university and some performance concerns in a portion of my previous roles due to divorce and burn-out. I make $80k/year in government IT, and $30-150k/year as the "AI" guy in a small 2-5 person group that offers a CAPTCHA-breaking API. The spa…

Despite the spamming angle, I think CAPTCHA-breaking is, on the balance, noble and honorable work. These things are user-hostile blights on the web, and any effort towards making them disappear as useless is worthwhile. Sites worried about spam should invest more in automated spam classification/elimination instead of punishing real users with CAPTCHA-solving. Not that I can offer a solution--if I could, I'd be a mil…

Who do you think spam classification false positives are going to be pubishing if not real users? At least with a captcha, you have some idea that you were rejected before you put in the effort to write your comment.
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