Gregory's ServerYes, #Mastodon supports #HCaptcha, but HCaptcha mines details of some of us with disabilities by asking us to sign up with an email address to, as they put it, 'get an accessibility cookie.' If you use that service, it is a bad time for many. HCaptcha is not my friend.
Edit: For reasons why I categorically state HCaptcha is evil, see this post I made in response to someone else. People have quite rightly asked me to clarify my stance, so here it is: https://universeodon.com/@FreakyFwoof/111956924313468553
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Andre Louis
54 comments
Sqaaakoi :flagEnby:
@FreakyFwoof hCaptcha is horribly difficult anyways, i would NOT recommend using it at all
Monty Icenogle
@FreakyFwoof Why support H Captcha, and not something like ReCaptcha? They had to pick the worst of the Captcha options! Blah, just my thoughts for what little they may be worth
Drew Mochak
@kd6cae @FreakyFwoof I honestly wonder if someone got a kickback. Really do not understand why certain people are so dead-set on integrating some closed-source for-profit nonsense just because "Google bad"
Andre Louis
Spam is bad, HCaptcha is just as bad. Please do not advocate for this evil, evil captcha solution. Please.
Jakob Rosin
@FreakyFwoof why would anyone advocate towards it, is beyond my imagination. voluntarely giving away your medical details for access to a service, while some people don't need to submit their personal details.
craftxbox
@FreakyFwoof The accessibility problem is definitely an issue on bigger corporate services that wouldn't give a shit but when 90% of the time you can email the instance admin and they'd sort you out in a few hours I don't see the purpose of demonizing hCaptcha. I'd personally rather deal with 100 email registrations before i'd deal with 1 spambot. 
John Ulrik
@FreakyFwoof Why is it evil specifically? Some of our clients keep advocating for hCaptcha because of their self-declared accessibility. A pointer to some kind of analysis would be much appreciated.
Charlotte Joanne
@FreakyFwoof @ujay68 @craftxbox I’ve never gotten it to work I tried to sign up to Firefish at least three times and each time just gave up!👩🦯
craftxbox
@Lottie @FreakyFwoof @ujay68 As an instance admin, personally we don't mind an email if you're having troubles. I can't speak for every admin but I wouldn't expect anyone to be any different. EDIT: Though yeah this is, Objectively terrible for anything that *isnt* as easy to contact someone for help
Andre Louis
@craftxbox @Lottie @ujay68 Well, you're one of the good ones. Many won't or can't respond to signup emails likely, or don't see them because they get junked, I mean there's any number of reasons. Respect your stance though.
Andre Louis
@Lottie @ujay68 @craftxbox You may not have gotten it to work, but guess what? They got *you* to work didn't they? They now have your email address on file for... How long do they keep it? How long are they hoarding our data for? Does anyone actually know?
the esoteric programmer
@FreakyFwoof cupoftea.social is now using hcaptcha as well, or planning it or something of that nature. I told the admin why they shouldn't enable it, that the cookie barely works anyway, that the text captcha is most of the times nonsense, that they require an email address only for us, and I believe they still use it, just so you know
Andre Louis
@miki Anything that isn't HCaptcha. A numeric problem, what is the number before four, plus two numbers after six? Add these together and type your answer. should be 11. 
Mikołaj Hołysz
@FreakyFwoof These are trivial to defeat by LLMs and heavily discriminatory, this time against those who don't speak English, aka the vast majority of the global population.
modulux
@miki @FreakyFwoof Just tried that one and chatgpt can't solve it. And there's no reason why it can't be internationalised.
Jayson Smith
@FreakyFwoof @miki And before anyone says it, the thought that a toddler might put a toy garbage truck in his/her mouth is beyond the point.
Andre Louis
@jaybird110127 @miki For what it's worth, I still rather use RECaptcha over HCaptcha any day of the week.
Jayson Smith
@FreakyFwoof @miki Oh me too! Unless, that is, I'm not signed into a Google account at the time, and it asks me to click the images that have Pan-Galactic Gargle Blasters, with no audio alternative.
Kevin Karhan
@FreakyFwoof @miki that makes sense... Or something like: "If you take the word "hello" and shift every letter by one position in the alphabet forward, how many F's are there? In this example the correct result would he "one 2"... In the current age where LLMs can't even count till 2 this is something most people can do... Or the aforementioned calculation sample... 
just a rock
@FreakyFwoof @ujay68 @craftxbox Oh yeah that's yucky. Thank you for saying something about this! 
mirabilos
@ujay68 @FreakyFwoof the accessibility is merely that: self-declared. It excludes lynx users categorically, of which there are quite some, and adoption of hcaptcha by fanfiction and other sites has made quite an amount of users, most visually impaired, very unhappy. I tried to contact hcaptcha support and they fail to even see the problem. fuck hCaptcha/Cloudflare
Drew Mochak
@ujay68 @FreakyFwoof Their solution was developed entirely on their own without outreach to the blind community. It forces us to disclose our disability, which allows us to be tracked by Intuition Machines, and across the internet by whoever has a business relationship with them, and/or knows to look for the cookie. It also allows them to deny us access to any service that uses them, for any reason or none.
Drew Mochak
@ujay68 @FreakyFwoof Also, as others mentioned, like all technology--sometimes it just doesn't work.
Kevin Karhan
@FreakyFwoof Agreed: Captchas are just ableost garbage!
modulux
@FreakyFwoof Moreover, 1) hCaptcha doesn't even work for (many of) us, or requires lowering the safety settings on browsers, and 2) captchas are not an especially useful way to stop bots. Find another way.
Josh Cheshire :padres:
@FreakyFwoof @ellesaurus Is there a better captcha service? (I’ve never looked beyond the recommendations and want to try doing better than the default.)
Andre Louis
@josh @ellesaurus The sad thing is, they all suck for various reasons but I don't know if any others take your email address. Rock and a hard-place I know.
Elle 💗
@josh Add a honeypot field, as well as a timer for how long it took to fill out the form. If the honeypot field is filled in, or if the form is submitted too quickly, disregard.
Josh Cheshire :padres:
@ellesaurus @FreakyFwoof In the end, they’re all just speed bumps. But I like that idea.
Jared Rimer
@ellesaurus @FreakyFwoof How do I add these to my forms? The honeypot field I've never heard of, and a timer sounds interesting. But in theory, someone could take less time to fill out a form than others.
Elle 💗
@jrimer2023 The time to fill out the form can be done in multiple ways, but the simplest is another hidden field that is populated with the timestamp of initial page load that submits with the form. Subtract that from the current time to get how long it took. The timer is meant to be very short, like a few seconds.
Jared Rimer
@ellesaurus @FreakyFwoof That's very interesting. Anywhere in particular in which we hould do that?
Jared Rimer
@ellesaurus @FreakyFwoof I'm not sure how I would implement this. I know HTML, and I tried my hand at CSS even after I was given a prototype but i could never master the concept. This sounds intriguing. 
Océane
@kkarhan @FreakyFwoof Yeah, clearly Eugen Rochko doesn't give a shit. I'm not a resentful person, but he's among the few people I consider to have hurt too many people through computers, me included.
mirabilos
@kkarhan @FreakyFwoof wasn’t it 60, not 80, in width for most Braille lines? (Though adding But, full ACK. I use lynx a lot as well.
mirabilos
@kkarhan @FreakyFwoof @ActionRetro while I just use |
@FreakyFwoof That cookie doesn't even fucking work, either, so it's basically a total barrier on top of the privacy implications for if it did ever actually work.