Exactly. We’re all out here licking corporate boots by clicking traffic lights for free, propping up their data plantations under the guise of “security.” Google turned paranoia into profit, and now Cloudflare’s farming our fingerprints like we’re glorified dairy cows.

That $3 settlement? Peanuts to keep us complacent while they mint billions off our collective unpaid labor. The real CAPTCHA is figuring out how to burn this extractive circus to the ground before we’re all indentured to their algorithmic overlords.

I love how it has taken this long for media to cover this issue. I thought this was common knowledge for about a decade

I had to go through seven captcha screens a couple of days ago just to apply for a fucking job.

If I wasn't so desperate for work, I would have said fuck it. I hate it.

You know, I think the best way for the Internet as a whole to stop using people as product, is to have a worldwide publically subsidised Internet, like the BBC or PBS but it is the Internet. The governments pitches in just like with any global programmes.

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/buster-captcha-solver-for/mpbjkejclgfgadiemmefgebjfooflfhl

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/buster-captcha-solver/

A useful extension. Works 90% of the time for me.

The shit has absolutely destroyed the internet. they only keep getting worse, taking more time and making me feel more stupid. there is no God.

Click the squares with your freedom in them:

The details are horrific:

• 819 million hours spent solving CAPTCHAs.

• $6.1 billion worth of our time at the US federal minimum wage.

• 134 Petabytes of internet bandwidth.

• consuming 7.5 million kWhs of energy.

• which produced 7.5 million pounds of CO2 pollution.

• This one's from the author of the article: putting the 819 million hours against the average human lifespan of 79 years, that's 1,182.7 lifetimes spent solving CAPTCHAs.

It's a free service that's been provided to website makers to easily add a way to reduce bot spam. And for a very long time, it worked

Captcha got tonnes of free training data, and in return website maintainer got an incredibly handy free tool to help secure their site.

Captcha 100% could have charged licensing for their tool, could charged money for developers to use their service.

They didn't, and I think it's perfectly reasonable they got the training data as "payment" instead.

Your favorite free websites you use get to have another part of their architecture stay free.

The website maintainer get an awesome free tool.

Captcha got training data to profit off of.

That's good internet where everyone wins without the need for bullshit licensing and fees and royalties and subscriptions.

Would you have rather your Netflix account cost an extra 15 cents per month or whatever to offset yet another licensing cost for some captcha tool?

Really? 100 hours on average for each person on the globe, including babies, the elderly, and those in extreme poverty? That seems like a lot

I always click wrong stuff first to see which captcha is training on my input and which one is actually checking what I click.

I got my compensation money from a different lawsuit, it was totally worth the ~$3usd

yeah, clicking on the checkmark means you are giving them permission to view info about your browser history, and what you did on those sites.

I knew it was training LLMs. I had a just had a feeling that it was, not any specific evidence. I hate being right all the time. -_-