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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

#311

Post by lou1306 »

Zababa wrote: post #130
zarzavat wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason this happens is that captchas are not localized. Most countries don't have mail boxes, only US, Canada, Australia, NZ have them so people from outside those countries may not think to distinguish mailboxes from parking meters and will just click every square that matches their mental model of a parking meter (a pole with something on top or a big box)

> Most countries don't have mail boxes (only US, Canada, Australia, NZ) They do, they just look different. At least that's how it is in France.

They're not the same as the classic US mailbox (). In the US you can use such a mailbox to send mail as well. In Europe you typically have private letterboxes for incoming mail and big, public post boxes for sending.

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

#312

Post by southerntofu »

caslon wrote: post #310
southerntofu wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, if your browser supports this and that, otherwise not. No audio? Bad luck. No JS? Bad luck. Also, i'm assuming, maybe wrongfully so, that Google would make accessible CAPTCHAs harder to pass, with the logic that sound-based CAPTCHAs are much easier to break for a bot. All in all, reCAPTCHA (and other modern CAPTCHAs like hCaptcha) are a usability/accessibility disaster. It should be a crime to enable that on a…

Browsers have been free for longer than reCAPTCHA has existed, and browsers with audio and JS have been free for longer, too. I don't like JavaScript, and I block reCAPTCHA, but it's ludicrous to pretend that Google hasn't made it as accessible as possible. There are a lot of things wrong with Google, but accessibility is one thing they're reasonably good at, and making up things to trash reCAPTCHA seems dishonest. A…

> browsers with audio and JS have been free for longer, too.

How is that an excuse? It's like having a café that only lets people wearing t-shirts in. Are you wearing a sweatshirt? "Well i'm sure you can download a t-shirt for free from your cupboard or one of your friends" /s.

It's a fundamental principle of interoperability ("strict about what you offer, lax about what you accept") that an online service should try to serve anyone, whether they have this or that technology or not enabled. In the case of the web, anyone with HTML parsing technology should be able to browse it... minus some stuff that actually doesn't work without additional technology.

> Audio reCAPTCHA is super easy.

I wouldn't know, it never let me through. I have to say, as a sighted person, the only times i've tried audio CAPTCHA were when Google wouldn't let me through using visual CAPTCHA (infinite CAPTCHA loop). Not even once have i been able to pass it.

I guess once you're on Google's no-pass list, whether you fill the CAPTCHA via audio or video doesn't matter, they're just not letting you through? I find it worrying that some people accept to have a private corporation strip-search their guests on the way to the doorbell/mailbox.

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

#313

Post by hef19898 »

innocenat wrote: post #242
andrepd wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be sort of okay with the general idea of proving I'm not a robot, you know what really rubs me the wrong way? It's how blatantly dishonest and disrespectful it is. Let me explain: google decides if you're human based on the data it has on you, such as your browsing profile and whether you're logged in to your Google account. Therefore it punishes you for trying to have privacy or refusing to use google services,…

What I hate more is US-centric of the CAPTCHA. Not only for reCAPTCHA, hCAPTCHA also failed in this regard. I mentioned before, but once I got present with hCAPTCHA asking me to select 電車 (lit. electric train, but since all trains in big cities in Japan are electric train, 'train' in English also usually got translated as 電車). There's a picture of diesel train in the choice. Do I select it? idk. Lately I have been pr…

I do remember parking meters, but then I also remember Walkmans. Could be an issue for solving Captchas I guess.

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

#314

Post by amelius »

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.

> A website with captchas is like a retail store with metal detectors; it's not somewhere I feel welcome.

How do you feel about Apple's face scanner?

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

#316

Post by dylan604 »

judge2020 wrote: post #127
andrepd wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are captcha providers besides google, such as hcaptcha, or even rolling your own solution (a la old vbulletin forums)

The issue with this is that you won’t have a scapegoat if people do continue to roll through credit cards. With ReCaptcha, you just say “all of these attempts had verified captchas” and the CC processor is unlikely to personally blame you/the company for the activity since ReCaptcha is widespread. With a custom solution or other captchas, they can just block you due to insufficient protections when they see you have…

If you disable anonymous checkout work so that you have to have a registered account and be logged in to check out stop these credit card rolling attempts? Shut down any account it occurs. Probably whack-a-mole, but is it effective enough to not deploy a captcha system and not have the merchant account suspended?

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

#317

Post by andrepd »

visarga wrote: post #294
sen wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been getting the truck one heaps lately, and constantly failing it. Fire engines, utes, Removalist vans, street sweepers, etc etc. How the hell am I supposed to know what some American programmer thinks a truck is? It’s pervasive across the entire internet.. we’re all expected to suddenly relearn the names of everything we’ve ever learned in our life because the US has decided the rest of the world is wrong and…

That's what concerns me about Apple's hashing + human verification scheme - what are the values of the humans? What do they consider a positive? Nude pictures of kids are ok in some cultures and not ok in others.

Related: in my country it's common for young kids (say under 6 or 7) to go to the beach naked. I always find it a bit disturbing that Americans consider it obscene, because it means they sexualise it...?

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

#318

Post by andrepd »

klondike_ wrote: post #293
andrepd wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be sort of okay with the general idea of proving I'm not a robot, you know what really rubs me the wrong way? It's how blatantly dishonest and disrespectful it is. Let me explain: google decides if you're human based on the data it has on you, such as your browsing profile and whether you're logged in to your Google account. Therefore it punishes you for trying to have privacy or refusing to use google services,…

If you disable Google's JavaScript the annoying fade out effect will be disabled, but it might make you do more than one as punishment

If I disable Google's js the captcha won't load at all it seems x)

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

#319

Post by rcxdude »

southerntofu wrote: post #312
caslon wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Browsers have been free for longer than reCAPTCHA has existed, and browsers with audio and JS have been free for longer, too. I don't like JavaScript, and I block reCAPTCHA, but it's ludicrous to pretend that Google hasn't made it as accessible as possible. There are a lot of things wrong with Google, but accessibility is one thing they're reasonably good at, and making up things to trash reCAPTCHA seems dishonest. A…

> browsers with audio and JS have been free for longer, too. How is that an excuse? It's like having a café that only lets people wearing t-shirts in. Are you wearing a sweatshirt? "Well i'm sure you can download a t-shirt for free from your cupboard or one of your friends" /s. It's a fundamental principle of interoperability ("strict about what you offer, lax about what you accept") that an online service should try…

Yeah, the CAPTCHA also doubles as a tarpit if you're deemed suffuciently undesirable.

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

#320

Post by caslon »

southerntofu wrote: post #312
caslon wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Browsers have been free for longer than reCAPTCHA has existed, and browsers with audio and JS have been free for longer, too. I don't like JavaScript, and I block reCAPTCHA, but it's ludicrous to pretend that Google hasn't made it as accessible as possible. There are a lot of things wrong with Google, but accessibility is one thing they're reasonably good at, and making up things to trash reCAPTCHA seems dishonest. A…

> browsers with audio and JS have been free for longer, too. How is that an excuse? It's like having a café that only lets people wearing t-shirts in. Are you wearing a sweatshirt? "Well i'm sure you can download a t-shirt for free from your cupboard or one of your friends" /s. It's a fundamental principle of interoperability ("strict about what you offer, lax about what you accept") that an online service should try…

You're just choosing different arbitrary lines. You can't play a triple-A video game on a PDP-11. You can't view things over ftp using Firefox. You can't do X because Y.

Literally everything is a choice of "If you refuse to use X, you will not get Y."

Most of my web browsers, including my phone's web browser, have JavaScript turned off. I can't use reCAPTCHA on the browser I'm using right now. It's not a big deal, and it's not something morally wrong. A piece of technology doesn't work if you're not using pieces of technology that operate with it. This is expected behavior.

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