Google ReCAPTCHA

I loathe Google’s ReCAPTCHA. I hate the fact they’re so difficult to solve and Google gives you no feedback on how it thinks you’re doing. (Which makes sense, actually: they don’t want bots to know how well they’re doing in solving them either.) Sometimes I’ve solved eight challenges in a row and still get more! At that point I have to shut down the browser, clear everything out, and start the whole process over again.

But that’s not the least of my concerns. First, Google, one of the most profitable companies on the planet, is using my labour, without compensation, to train their image matching algortihms. Another is that I have to interact with Google. I’m not a fan of Google and the deep tendrils they have in the modern web, and the fact they’re collecting vast amounts of personal information about web users without permission or oversight.

Finally, developers implementing ReCAPTCHA on their websites are both lazy and incompetent. They’re lazy in that they have a problem of bots leaving spaam and/or signing up for their web sites, but instead of giving thought to implementing a simple solution on their own they are simply choosing to grab a bunch of JavaScript from Google. They’re incompetent in that they simply assume everyone allows their computers unfettered access to Google, so they don’t check to ensure the ReCAPTCHA code loaded correctly. Nor do they do anything else on their page to indicate a ReCAPTCHA is in use.

The above means that people like me who block most Google URLs in their hosts file end up with forms that mysteriously can’t be submitted. Worse, the site owners themselves simply don’t care. They don’t care that by using the ReCAPTCHA they’re furthering Google’s stranglehold on the web. For sure they don’t care about the odd upset user who can’t get something done on their web site.

And this week I had to interact with ReCAPTCHA on three separate occasions.

First, I was trying to get a manual from manualslib.com, because the company that made the device has decided they don’t want to host the manual any more on their site. In this case I was completely unable to solve the ReCAPTCHA and was unable to get the manual.

Then I wanted to ask the folks at DuckDuckGo if there was a way to alert users that interacting with a site may mean having to solve a ReCAPTCHA. But the only way to interact with DDG is via Reddit. So I had to sign up for a Reddit account. Guess what? Another bloody ReCAPTCHA! At least that one gave me only three challenges before deciding I was a human.

The third interaction I’ll note in the next section.