
Cloudflare dumps reCAPTCHA as Google intends to charge for its use - 1cvmask
https://www.zdnet.com/article/cloudflare-dumps-recaptcha-as-google-intends-to-charge-for-its-use/
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detaro
previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22812509](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22812509)

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pmlnr
Good. Make it EXPENSIVE and thus purge it from the web.

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c0inster
Agreed. I hate it. Luckily they is a way around it:
[https://github.com/dessant/buster](https://github.com/dessant/buster)

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IshKebab
That doesn't seem like a way around the problem of how to identify bots
without pissing off humans. If anything it will make it worse!

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pmlnr
You don't. Bots will always be present, always one step ahead. Honestl, why
bother?

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IshKebab
Because people don't like spam?

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c0inster
You'll always get spam, email for example. You're not required to solve a
stupid task before sending it. The recievers mail client can filter basic spam
from real mails. Yes, there are false positives and you'll have to look in the
spam folder. But you will do it carefully, not get phished that easily and see
no sketchy pill ads.

Bots and spam will always exist and training googles AI to detect stop signs
won't change that.

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baq
Maybe finally I’ll be able to browse the Web in private mode via vpn instead
of useless clicking tiles with cars or traffic lights.

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Mediterraneo10
I wouldn't mind CAPTCHA hell so much if the tasks I was doing were benefiting
libre projects that everyone could draw on, like OpenStreetMap or Wikipedia.
The offensive thing about CAPTCHA is that your work is for the sole sake of
improving one corporation’s product.

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rapnie
That would be a great idea for a captcha project! You might wanna post to
open-source-ideas: [https://github.com/open-source-ideas/open-source-
ideas](https://github.com/open-source-ideas/open-source-ideas)

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Mediterraneo10
There are already alternative CAPTCHA projects. The problem is that the most-
visited websites on the internet never adopted them, instead content to use
Google's solution.

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seemslegit
Given how abusive recaptcha is for anyone running a even a minimally tracking-
hardenned browser, dumping it is not just a matter of cost savings - it's good
business as far as conversion rates are concerned.

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gexla
I want to be happy about this. I look forward to a future where I never have
to see another fire hydrant, bus or stop light. At times I identify so many
traffic landmarks I feel like I just went through a commute to get to the
thing I wanted to see.

I don't think that's our future though. It appears the replacement is much the
same. From the article.

> Intuition Machines usually makes money by renting access to hCaptcha to
> companies who want to run image classification experiments, and then pay
> website owners to implement its hCaptcha product.

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icefo
As usual you shouldn't depend on Google for anything (especially if it's free)
but I wonder what motivated them to charge for reCAPTCHA.

For Gmaps I could see the reason: we have the best map so you're going to pay
a lot of money if you want to use it.

But I fail to see the reason for reCAPTCHA if they still intend to build their
self driving car: the more classified data they have about the world the
better and reCAPTCHA is probably inexpensive to run.

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Cyberdog
The article hinted at this possibility, but perhaps Google has been using
reCAPTCHA to train their systems for so long that the value of identifying yet
another stoplight or crosswalk is no longer worth the cost of running the
service to them.

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tcmb
Is there any information from Google on moving to a paid model for reCaptcha?
I couldn't find anything. Is this only for large-volume customers like
cloudflare, and thus not announced publically anywhere?

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c0inster
Probably don't need all the free AI training in that direction anymore. Just a
guess.

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captn3m0
Nice to see that the alternative (hCaptcha) supports PrivacyPass.

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dna_polymerase
Does that imply Google has moved past supervised learning?

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nkozyra
Hard to draw that conclusion versus they feel like they finally have "enough"
training data.

