I think it's speculated that you're recorded as being a useful classifier if you answer correctly on initial test captchas, so you get given Google's datasets for machine learning. It would explain why you get picture tests even after you should definitely pass the check.

If that is true that is a huge breach of trust. Are these practices ever audited?

By whom? For what? (Meaning - probably not, unless you count a few Googlers sanity checking launches)

You mean, they still haven't managed to classify those storefronts correctly, after 3 years or so?

Yes - I feel at this point that our labor is simply being used to help provide training data for Google's algorithms.

I mean, this has been exactly the situation since recaptcha was invented.

This is not how it is supposed to be.

In a parallel universe of fluffy niceness we willingly provide our help and in that way we get all those old books converted to ASCII and available for us to read online. Our efforts are for the good of mankind. Similarly with the newer challenges, we help the maps be up to date and again this is for the good of mankind and those needing help getting around.

Clearly this doesn't work in an era where the 'don't be evil' mantra is long forgotten and people only see Google as some advertiser friendly capitalist monopolist beast.

Google need to work on their relationship with their customers, to be a benevolent dictatorship of sorts. They are lousy at customer service and there are other pain points that they are ignorant to. I don't see how this helps.

> Google need to work on their relationship with their customers

Google's customers are those who buy advertising. The rest of us are just cannon fodder.

The "hills" category is the worst.

Have come to the conclusion it really means any patch of grass.

How to label your ML data for free.

By offering a free service to website operators that mitigates the ever-growing challenge of abuse on the internet that they and their users have to deal with.

Seems pretty bilateral.

Using highly trusted users thinking that they are just proving their honesty.