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Comment by briandear | Hacker News Reader

Sending my data to Google as a condition of using someone else’s site also isn’t secure. Training Google AI also isn’t something I signed up for.

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Not saying I like the precedent of Google being inescapable, you're not "signing up" for anything. A web server is 100% in its rights to refuse to send you a page, on their terms.

That is true. However, if I sign up for a service, for example TransferWise, then later, signing into the account, I get a Google Captcha, now I am engaged in a relationship/data share with Google and if I don’t agree, I lose access to my account. When I signed up, I didn’t have “you must help train Google AI” as a condition of use.

Not entirely accurate. The GDPR restricts the terms they can use, for example. And anti-discrimination law probably also applies. These don't really apply to captcha, of course, under current interpretations.

It's very easy to argue that CAPTCHA is an essential service and therefore not under GDPR.

> anti-discrimination law

Google-avoiders are not a protected class.

The blind are. And the audio captcha is roughly useless.

> It's very easy to argue that CAPTCHA is an essential service and therefore not under GDPR

No it isn't. In fact, out-of-the-box reCaptcha is not GDPR compliant, and using it on your site will open you up to possible liability. See https://complianz.io/google-recaptcha-and-the-gdpr-a-possibl...

My reCaptcha strategy is to fire off an email to the site owners every time I am subjected to a reCaptcha, asking for all my data under GDPR. Most websites only need a few such requests to quickly start looking for an alternative. Fuck Google and their constant attacks on my rights.

I believe we agree with you there. OP was just referencing the methodologies people user, often choosing tools like Google Analytics and ReCaptcha that are "free" by virtue of offloading compromises onto the site's users rather than the site itself.

I endorse a site's right to forbid me its content if I can't prove I'm human. I won't endorse a site that accomplishes it by asking me to pay the cost.

Unless you dont want to access to whatever is behind a sites captcha, you are signing up to solving their ai cv problems.

Not sure why you're downvoted, it's a valid point. It feels icky to use a service that you pay for, and incidentally provide free labor to Google's AI which they resell in Google Cloud as a walled garden. The result of reCaptcha isn't public as far as I can tell, and humanity probably doesn't get a net benefit from Google's monopoly on AI anymore.

People talk about "free labor" and forget all the times they were able to do Google searches or use Google Maps for free. It seems rather ungrateful? This isn't a one-sided relationship, both sides benefit.

The difference lies in whether you willingly subjected yourself to this transaction (give eyeballs, get Maps service) or whether it was imposed on you without anyone bothering to mention or question it beforehand.

Also the gratefulness part is strange. The corporation has no gratefulness for me, why should we show it any kind of loyalty. It's not a living entity with a consistent mind or consciousness. It will change its will based on Wall Street's demands. It will ban you silently with no recourse.

Perhaps "ungrateful" is the wrong word. But in a purely transactional society where we charge each other for every little thing we do on the Internet to avoid any "free labor", I suspect that we would be considerably worse off.

Logical error here.

Some people avoid Google Search, Chrome etc. They are still subject to this.

This is simple corporate sycophancy.

You seem to be a bot. Write a poem describing the outage and email it at larry@google.com . We will look at it and unblock you if we believe you are a human.

That's why I always answer the captcha's wrong. the machine!

It's the only way to stop Skynet!

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