I fucking hate recaptcha

[Margo Martindale]

we wouldnt need captchas if the entirety of russia, china, india, and every 3rd world country was banned from the internet

 

[StacticShock]

this is some bot talk...

And yes, it can die in a fire.

the captchas or their creators? because i'm in favor of offing both.

 

[The Connected Nose]

the captchas or their creators? because i'm in favor of offing both.

 

[Neodanthril]

The audio versions are much easier

 

[Secret Messages]

Click on the crosswalks.
*images fade out for 5 seconds, new ones fade in for 5 seconds*
Click on the crosswalks.
*images fade out for 5 seconds, new ones fade in for 5 seconds*
Click on the crosswalks.
*images fade out for 5 seconds, new ones fade in for 5 seconds*
Click on the crosswalks.
*images fade out for 5 seconds, new ones fade in for 5 seconds*
Click on the crosswalks.
*click the finish button*
Please try again.
Click on the motorcycles.

*try audio mode*
We think you are trying to use automated tools to access this site. Please try again later.

How did I forgot about the fading ones those are so much worse

 

[Combustion Engine]

The people responsible for recaptcha v2 should be considered enemies of humanity and be treated as such. To be fair, many cali companies and developers should be subject to that treatment. In Google's case, they discovered people would be willing to do unpaid labour work, and website operators would merrily subject their users to that, with recaptcha v1 (the old one you would type the first control word in, and then just nigger). Then it just got worse, and all of that training has never been published. When you're using google image search google lens, you're using a tool you probably contributed to, at no expense, and who knows what more.

Click on the crosswalks.
*images fade out for 5 seconds, new ones fade in for 5 seconds*
Click on the crosswalks.
*images fade out for 5 seconds, new ones fade in for 5 seconds*

The fading ones (in combination with grainy images) are the highest difficulty and might as well mean you're considered a bot already for them and are being slowed down intentionally, that you can actually pass that after double-digit attempts is not a feature nor wanted behaviour. There was some script to remove the hidden: property from it so it'd be a little faster years ago but it was neutered.

I get the I guess you're a fucking bot page for any Google search every 15 minutes or so, without VPN. No crosswalk/motorcycle picking but it delays it by like 10 seconds. Makes sticking to Brave Search much easier.

Archive.today is almost unusable on VPN. It used recaptcha but I think it doesn't initiate at all anymore, don't remember.

So here's the thing. You don't like these captchas now, but it's definitely the prelude to something worse when they stop being able to prevent any bots. Probably some kind of Internet ID or mandatory 2FA. This crap is just the warmup, we are fucked.

About a decade ago Cloudflare (internet's favourite MITM; internet's favourite enabler of botnets and DDoS services coincidentally giving them more business and control) offered an extension to help skip Turnstilesque verification. At some point it was worse than it is now, rendering browsing major websites through Tor virtually impossible, so they were pressed into that half-assed attempt. They've long gotten rid of it in favour of some standardized """privacy""" pass, but nobody cares about it, and even less actually implement it (and you still need some sort of verification to obtain tokens). Depending on how LLMs and agentic tools around them evolve, that sort of thing might come back, but through locking down users' devices instead, as all the pieces are mandatory by most recent proprietary operating systems, and chrom* has an attestation verification (originally for passkeys). That would be the perfect excuse, and they would claim all of that is for your own safety: your system must be locked down so that you can browse the web with slightly less captcha.

 

[Spruce Supremacist]

miss the days of squiggly letters and lord inglip

It was a simpler time.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole 2]

Expert mode.