Did HN just start using Google recaptcha for logins?

No recent changes, but we do sometimes turn captchas on for logins when HN is under some kind of (possible) attack or other. That's been happening for a few hours. Hopefully it goes away soon.

Btw I also fume when I have to work as an unpaid manual image recognizer, so I'm open to alternatives.

What boggles me about this is:

I do NOT consent to working for free for Google to train their AI.

I'd be willing to solve any CAPTCHA the product of which would be open source, or even useless.

But Google is a for-profit company which uses the solutions to create proprietary software and profit off of it, they won't pay me, and I have no way to opt-out of working for them because the most useful places of the Internet use their CAPTCHAs.

(Yes, I can intentionally put wrong solutions into their CAPTCHAs to poison their data, but I'm afraid they get so many valid solutions that they can just calculate the wrong ones out.)

Are there no viable alternatives more respectful of privacy than Google's recaptcha? Seems like an anti-user choice to me.

Upon upvoting this submission, I was prompted to login which included a captcha. Possibly due to use of a VPN. Are you using a VPN?

It appears so. I have this [1] in my cache and had to click on objects which is odd as there would never be robot behavior from my IP. Perhaps the bot submissions were becoming too much. I've not used a VPN in ages.

[1] - https://www.gstatic.com/recaptcha/releases/5qcenVbrhOy8zihcc...

Hi Folks!

I was not prompted to do a CAPTCHA logging in on the clearnet, but this may be my last batch of posts I do if that ever changes... for I will never consent to asking GOOG if I can post here.

Let us set aside the myriad of issues with visual CAPTCHAs and how they exclude folks with disabilities such as blindness.

There are other solutions like Hcaptcha[1] that do not use GOOG, a company which has strayed so far from it's "Don't be evil" mission that they went from supporting Mozilla via the search deal to moving the Chrome team into the same building, poaching key employees, and aggressively pushing folks so young they can't ask for help without violating COPPA to switch to a browser that would allow them to monitor them from cradle to the grave.

I greatly sympathize with the goal of an authentic dialog... trust me.

But using GOOG to accomplish it is not going to do that.

(The true threats to HN, like any democratic space, come not from automatons, but human beings. Only when you stop giving undue attention to the wrong... metrics... will you find the ecstatic truths you claim to seek.)

- "Greg"

I use Safari almost universally, and therefore can't pass a recaptcha challenge. For the moment I remain logged in, but I suppose once the cookie dies, I won't be able to get back here.

If true, that's really, really sad.

Gross, yep. And since I'm using a VPN I'm thrown into the "give them the most painful captchas just to be sure" bucket.

Do what you have to do. Keeping the platform safe is your job. Others might put different values above yours.

If you want drop in replacement, Cloudflare a turnstile as mentioned. Otherwise fully behind Cloudflare. CDN won't help much due to nature of content but WAF rules can be used to easily turn on invisible captcha based on rules.

Considering the articles and general sentiment we have towards Google and AI training, if this is true HN failed to read the room.

Edit: Yep, it's real. Seriously?

Edit 2: Understandable, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34313452.

I was hit with the recaptcha but I did have Private Relay turned on.

https://imgbox.com/T4nllHQD

Edit: turned off private relay and reCaptcha is still there.

Can confirm incognito login had to match images of cars. Dang please do not make me match images of cars, busses, and traffic lights. Please!

Doesn’t HN use cloudflare? I’d guess that’s the source of the captcha and not something that was implemented by HN on purpose.

At least use Funcaptcha by Arkose HN gods.

Just tried re-signing in and got reCAPTCHA without any VPNs on Firefox/Linux.

I logged out, and upon login recaptcha made me solve FIVE puzzles. JFC.