Well, the site is probably not taking on Google all that much just yet, but they are interviewing Marko Saric who is.

The plausible landing page gives me zero cookies and only requests are to plausible.io and testing.plausible.io

https://plausible.io/

Could you explain more about what is consumer hostile about Google's re-captcha?

Any recommended alternatives would be appreciated as well.

You’re only a considered a real person if you use Googles blessed browser set up the way Google likes it.

This is not true. I've used exclusively Firefox and Safari for years and have never fallen afoul of recaptcha except when testing it as a developer.

If they're using the latest version (v3) of re-captcha, it's not hostile as it doesn't even have user interaction.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbvxFW4UJdU

It runs entirely in the background, and pretty much the only time you'll see a prompt is if you're using a VPN, Tor, or specifically block it.

Yes, "it runs entirely in the background" means it tracks the hell out of you, across websites.

Basically you are blocked if you care about privacy and refuse this tracking.

That's what I'm willing to call "hostile". I'd say, it's even worse than picking a few pictures, which is already hostile.

That's about it. Horrible user experience - oh you're about to pay us, just click a few sidewalks first - and condescension of asking people to do a menial task that improves their ML models. But forcing you to use one of their sanctioned browsers and let the record what they want to is where the real hostility comes in. Its exercising monopoly power to squeeze more out of people and repress competition, I'd call that hostile.

Which is still miles less hostile than a website forcing you to prove you are not a bot, every single time, which was the point.

>pretty much the only time you'll see a prompt is if you're using a VPN, Tor, or specifically block it.

Or using a non Google browser or using an account that Google doesn't like (because they can't associate it with a real identity or whatever.)

hCaptcha has been mentioned as alternative.

I find hCaptcha way more annoying to solve than reCAPTCHA. The puzzles take way longer and I often have to do multiple of them.

Do you block Google trackers aggressively? reCAPTCHA uses that very heavily: if you allow all of their stuff and they track you across the web, you'll have to basically never do more than click the button. On the other hand, if you take your privacy seriously and are aggressive about tracker blocking, you'll have a pretty awful time.

I imagine hCaptcha doesn't have enough trackers sprinkled around the web to use those as signals for this.

I do block Google trackers, and have network state partitioning enabled, however the reCAPTCHA tests are usually bearable. (often a checkbox, sometimes a page) It seem like I get at least 2 pages of tests for hCaptcha every time.

This is under the control of the site with hCaptcha, so you'll tend to see more variety in difficulty levels depending on their settings.

There will always be some individual variance, but when we've tested this people always solve hCaptcha faster than reCAPTCHA on average.

(disclosure: work there)

Same. I heavily block google scripts and hate reCAPTCHA with a passion, but hCaptcha really takes the cake for the most painful captcha experience.

The fact that they will need to pay Google for this service after a certain threshold also limits taking them on. Pennies but still paying them.

Off topic but I’ve noticed recently that I’m frequently forced to incorrectly answer re-captchas the way a computer would in order to move forward.

Some examples: “click all the tractors” showed I did not complete the task because of a photo of construction equipment; “click all the crosswalks” because I didn’t select the photo of a thick white fence; “click all the traffic lights” because I didn’t select a photo of a parking meter. I just clicked the incorrect photo so I could move on but I can’t help but wonder if there’s any mechanism to catch those incorrect (manual, human) annotations on the training data Google is collecting.

What’s the non-hostile alternative?

Old-school "squiggly letters" captcha? For all the fear mongering around AI and machine learning supposedly breaking them, I'm still not aware of a general-purpose tool that would solve those out of the box without significant engineering effort.

A general purpose tool like this one? https://github.com/PatrickLib/captcha_recognize

The worry is not about ML. It's about bot farms in India/China with real people behind the wheel. That's why CAPTCHA needs to be able to evolve without maintenance from the website operator.

It’s not like Googles solution is watertight.