I didn't pick this up earlier, but when you combine this ...
Mason:
> "I was unsurprised to learn that there are "CAPTCHA sweatshops" in which
humans solve CAPTCHAs repeatedly so that bots can access websites."
... with this ...
"What many people aren’t aware of, however, is that each time they complete
one of these [reCaptcha] security checks, they are unwittingly training
Google’s machine learning datasets."
https://aibusiness.com/recaptcha-trains-google-robots/
(see also:
https://www.techradar.com/news/captcha-if-you-can-how-youve-been-training-ai-for-years-without-realising-it
and
https://medium.com/@AntonioCasilli/is-nocaptcha-a-ruse-devised-by-google-to-make-you-work-for-free-for-their-face-recognition-20a7e6a9f700
)
... what that means in practice is that Google is (indirectly) using
sweatshop labour to train their machine learning systems. If it's wrong when
Nike and the Gap and Apple do it, it's wrong when Google do it, even if they
do it in a way that gives them plausible deniability.
It would be an amazing expose if a journalist could find evidence that
Google is complicit in the operation of these sweatshops and the whole
anti-spam thing is just a cover ...
CalmStorm:
> "In all seriousness, though captcha needs to go... badly."
We have terrible spam problems on CoActivate.org because the sysadmin is one
of the few people who would rather fight endless spam fires than
inconvenience new users with captchas. The only way we're going to get rid of
captchas is happen is if someone develops a workable replacement based on
tricking bots into revealing they are bots, as described here:
http://ezinearticles.com/?Captchas-Considered-Harmful---Why-Captchas-Are-Bad-And-How-You-Can-Do-Better&id=1104207
