musdok
🅰🅻🅸🅲🅴 (🌈🦄)How do modern CAPTCHAs work?
By letting Google examine your browsing history (among other things).
The more you know 🌠
🄱🅁🄾🄽🄲🄾@alice very interesting! Thx 👍
Labrador@alice If I am able to avoid ads maybe they don't have enough information to know if I am human or bot?
Are we creating two Internets? The internet accessible to people without adblockers and the internet accessible to everyone, also to bots.
Elio Campitelli
Andreas K
Tom
Gamaliel🐌@alice super interesante, google ha creado una manera opaca de usar un robot que solo identifica humanos ¿qué puede salir mal? Y lo hemos hecho entre todos y no sabemos casi nada de como funciona pero evidentemente requiere in monton de cómputo y datos de cada persona para funcionar...
No para mi gracias!
Mikael Lundin 🍀🥦♻️@alice yeah, every time I click one of those and it doesn’t require me to identify motorcycles, I have failed to protect my privacy. ☹️
Julius Schwartzenberg - Юліус@alice with Cloudflare it's also about what kind of IP address you connect from and possibly location data they associate with IP addresses.
Sites that work without JavaScript enabled at all in some countries, can only be accessed by letting Cloudflare's proprietary JavaScript run in other countries.
Miakoda 
Moss (the τεχie) <(fsm)>{{
Luna Lactea@alice That explains why I fail reCAPTCHAs so much; I don't give access to my browser history & I usually use a touchscreen.
David H.@alice This is a fun take on this: https://youtu.be/4VrLQXR7mKU?si=u1lkikN38ThJK4gG
"In Victoria Warmerdam's short film, a series of failed Captcha tests plunges a woman into a strange new reality."
“I’m Not a Robot” (2025 Academy Award Winner) | The New Yorker Screening Room
In Victoria Warmerdam’s short film, a series of failed Captcha tests plunges a woman into a strange new reality. Still haven’t subscribed to The New Yorker o...
Frank Verhoeven
Thomas Rigby@alice i feel better about "failing" so many now! 🙃
LukefromDC@alice This is why I block ReCaptcha and everything "protected" behind it. Also one more confirmation that my choice to block all of Google on all sites except the Invidious 3ed party Youtube scraper is the correct choice.
The Great Llama 
@alice
So, Google has solved a problem they substantially helped create and their solution is to further invade everyone's privacy.
Great.
StarkRG@alice If you have anti-tracking plugins you get shown the image grid again to perform free labor.
flossposse@alice 100%. For Google and Cloudflare, the definition of "bot" includes "humans we can't identify".
Kevin Karhan 
@alice there are more privacy-friendly alternatives tho...
Fabos @ EH23 (not an OS)@alice so, if a company (other than google) enforces me to use recaptcha, they make me giving google access to my browser hidyory, without having my consent? If I open a site with this recaptcha I wasn't told about it ... there was no link before
NGC-Ollie@alice interesting, thanks. My browser is configured to block all cookies, set "do not track" and disable JavaScript. reCAPTCHA is still working. I guess a lot of engineering effort was spent to solve all those limitations.
Strypey@alice
> How do modern CAPTCHAs work. By letting Google examine your browsing history (among other things)
Which is why anyone building ethical tech needs to refuse any "services" provided by DataFarmers, including CAPTCHAs. Doing without their functions until they can be replaced by other ethical tech creators.
Willi@alice so constantly having to click stupid pictures around the internet means google doesnt know what i am doing or who i am? hmm good. captchas kind of feel satisfying now. :)
sophie@alice funny thing: whenever I see a captcha I purposly chnage my trajectory to the checkbox, instead of going direct to it I also go a bit over it and back. I get like wayyyy less image solving problems as before. Truly a great system
tautology@alice yet more reasons why CAPTCHAs just shouldn't be used. Everything a CAPTCHA does can be performed better by other designs (e.g. an increasing time back off on failure) that don't wreck privacy, have good UX and can be used by vision impaired people.
CAPTCHAs should've died in the early 00s when they were first mooted.
Bob K Mertz 
@alice
There's some kind of irony here, I think
lemurGro@alice well....it kinda explains why when I'm o a private window I have to click 100s of images on captcha before it let's me continue
chase 
@alice good video! here’s another that recently came out. ever since then it’s more obvious why i need to check if i’m a robot more when using a vpn https://youtu.be/VTsBP21-XpI?si=UhGWYd44Vgjq0olr
Why reCAPTCHA is Spyware
EndlessMason@alice
Captchas: the best way to know your adblockers are working!
Captchas: the best way to know your adblockers are working!
オチュー (stop colonialism 🇵🇸)@alice The thing about bots "going straight to check the box" in recapcha seem pretty inept to me. How could you not just randomize a little variation and invent some kind of random history ?
Feels pretty easy.
Murdoc Addams 🧛🏻
🇨🇦@alice
So maybe I missed it, but what to do about it? Privacy plugins? Choice of browser? Don't click the box? Nothing, it's too late?
So maybe I missed it, but what to do about it? Privacy plugins? Choice of browser? Don't click the box? Nothing, it's too late?