Recaptcha Disobediance, Part 4

So, the idea is that one of the Recaptcha words is the real password, and one is a word from a book Recaptcha is being paid to digitize.  If you want to read my rants about this, just check out the 'recaptcha' tag for parts 1 to 3.

My previous approach was to try and guess which was not the password and type 'slave' in this space.  This approach has become increasing unsuccessful. My new strategy is to not type the last letter of both words.  This works every time.

And if one of those words is actually a password, it shouldn't work, should it?  Hmmm?

See also:
Researcher Cracks ReCAPTCHA

Yet Another Rant About Recaptcha

Imagine a stranger came up to you and said: "I am going to install this switch in your house.

"Now every time you want to turn on your light you will have to click the switch twice, not once like before--then the light will come on. Oh, and sometimes if you don't move around enough the light will spontaneously go off and you will have to switch it on again. And I will gradually change all of the light switches in your house to this system, and perhaps the garbage disposal and garage door operator too.

And he adds apologetically, "sometimes you won't flick the switch in quite the right way. But that is okay, just doing it again and it should eventually work."

Now you might ask why the hell he is going to do this. And he might say, "oh, mostly we will harness this energy and use it to good things like provide power to poor people. But some undisclosed amount of the time we will just use it to make some money. And I am going to keep the money. But we have convinced the power company to require you to use these switches, so you really do not have any choice."

How would you feel about that?

Because you know those recaptcha field where you type in two words? One of those word is a security precaution, the other is you digitalising a scanned document for someone else. And at least some pf the time that someone else is a commercial entity like the new York Times who "paid an undisclosed sum to von Ahn's CMU team to complete its project."

Recaptacha is portrayed as being so clever because it uses a worthless and wasted resource (our time) to make something valuable (money for them). First it was on Wordpress, and Craiglist, then Today.com, now Shutterstock. Companies are taking the easy road of giving away their contributors' and customers' time for a cheap security option. Cheap to them that it, as is usual the workers end up bearing the cost in units of a few second here and there throughout their day. But to the tune of decoding millions of words per day--both for the public good and for profit.

And nobody seems to mind? Is it because
* Young white men from universities must be obeyed?
* We truly think our time is worthless?
* Typing barely legibly word is fun?
* We like saving large commercial companies money?

Just say no to Recaptcha. In this economy companies should hire people to fix their security and the New York Times can get my labor for free when they post the resulting archives on the open internet, also for free. Until them the digital proletariat need to protest, not thank "the man" for exploiting them.

Kudos to Covergirl...

The Good:

Covergirl has broken the mold a little in using Ellen Degeneres as their latest "covergirl".

The Ungood

Amazon is removing Amazon rankings from books considered too "adult". Like Ellen Degeneres's biography.

Recaptcha Civil Disobediance

I have previously written about how the recaptcha system appropriates the labor of users without their explicit understanding and consent, and without an 'opt out' option. To me, forced or unacknowledged labor is an issue of fairness and a desire for an informed and empowered society. Yes, it may only add up to a few minutes a week, but the principle remains the same.

Thus I am suggesting a course of protest action. When filling out a recaptcha you see two words. In many cases it is easy to deduce which is the word there for the user's benefit (to show they are not a spam bot) and which is there to make the folks at Recaptcha money and kudos (by requiring use to interpret a work from a document they are probably being paid to digitize).

When I feel I know which word is an attempt to appropriate my labor (often a non-word like a syllable or number) I instead type the word "slave" in response. If you feel as I do about this issue you might try doing the same. So long as you correctly fill out the word that is there for visual verification your comment will still go through as normal.

[OT] Tsunamis: Not Just Metaphor--Not a Just Metaphor

Connecting the Quiksilver brand to the Microsoft brand = dumb
Having anything to do with he phrase "economic tsunami" = horrible



Words may just be words, but you do not surf a Tsunami. An image of a surfing goods CEO surfing a tsunami is not just profoundly ignorant of surfing, it is profoundly insensitive, smug, affluent-centric and just plain naff. It may have been 4 whole years, but over 200,000 deaths should still raise the word "tsunami" above the level of glib soundbites. What next, "economic 9/11", "economic holocaust"?

[picture excerpted from an award winning picture by Arko Datta shown here]

Captcha = Slave Labor

Sometimes I feel like a real grinch, but this is just something to consider....

I often see online discussions where it is suggested that people shouldn't work for free or very low wages. The basic idea being that working for free is under-valuing yourself, and lower the rates for other workers.

The problem is that a lot of hard work is done for social capital. Housework, parenting, charity, hobbies, clubs etc etc. Tasks are done for non-monetary compensation. However there is still a

This is where the grinch part comes in.

CAPTCHA is a system that makes you type a word to make sure you are a person. Anyone who comments on blogs has come across this verification process. And you know what? Its a pain in the ass. A lot of them don't work too well and make commenting more difficult and occasionally impossible. But never mind. Blocking spam helps a site provide content to me--so that's okay with me.

reCAPTCHA adds another word to "improves the process of digitizing books by sending words that cannot be read by computers to the Web in the form of CAPTCHAs for humans to decipher." So, it adds a word that is hard to see, for no benefit to the user whatsoever. I am not being compensated and it is making the CAPTCHA harder, slower and more annoying. So if as a blog host or user I am supporting reCAPTCHA it is presumably for social capital.

Do I support the digitisation of these books? I don't know, no one asked me. Is It a charity? Are the books being made public domain? Are other people paid for farming this job out to me and the other cyber-proles?

The reCAPTCHA website states the two places where materials are sourced but that is all. They do not say whether the digital material produced is for public use or charitable purposes. No need to explain there things to the "help", it seems?

CNET crows: "Reusing your 'wasted' time online". The Grinchsays: wasting my useful time online. Please guys, don't make visual verification harder than it needs to be unless it is clearly and explicitly for the greater good.

It is for ME to decide if my time is being "wasted", rather than someone else who is taking it for their own purposes. And I have to assume for the purposes of making them money and getting them the social capital of admiration and acclaim.

Because it seems everyone loves them for stealing away our time for their benefit...

...everyone except the grinch.