I use Firefox and Firefox Mobile on the desktop and Android respectively, Chromium with Bromite patches on Android, and infrequently Brave on the desktop to get to sites that only work properly with Chromium (more and more often - another whole separate can of worms too, this…) And I always pay attention to disable google.com and gstatic.com in NoScript and uBlock Origin whenever possible.

I noticed something quite striking: when I hit sites that use those hateful captchas from Google - aka “reCAPTCHA” that I know are from Google because they force me to temporarily reenable google.com and gstatic.com - statistically, Google quite consistently marks the captcha as passed with the green checkmark without even asking me to identify fire hydrants or bicycles once, or perhaps once but the test passes even if I purposedly don’t select certain images, and almost never serves me those especially heinous “rolling captchas” that keep coming up with more and more images to identify or not as you click on them until it apparently has annoyed you enough and lets you through.

When I use Firefox however, the captchas never pass without at least one test, sometimes several in a row, and very often rolling captchas. And if I purposedly don’t select certain images for the sake of experimentation, the captchas keep on coming and coming and coming forever - and if I keep doing it long enough, they plain never stop and the site become impossible to access.

Only with Firefox. Never with Chromium-based browsers.

I’ve been experimenting with this informally for months now and it’s quite clear to me that Google has a dark pattern in place with its reCAPTCHA system to make Chrome and Chromium-based browsers the path of least resistance.

It’s really disgusting…

    • ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.orgOP
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      1 year ago

      I never see them because I do not use google services for anything.

      You don’t have to use Google services to get served Google captchas. The sites you want to visit do it for you and foist them on you.

      The reason why you don’t see reCAPTCHAs is because you don’t have to visit sites that use reCAPTCHAs.

      • j4k3@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        There are open source embedded CAPTCHAs. Lemmy has one in the github repo, or linked to one in an issue post IIRC. All of my devices are either on a whitelist firewall, or have google blacklisted. I haven’t even had a prompt for a CAPATCHA in years. It is like sites with cookies or popups, I consider these things to indicate broken websites and leave immediately. If I care for the content I’ll find an archived version of the site elsewhere. I set my own expectations, and don’t care how that relates to anyone else’s.

        • ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.orgOP
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          1 year ago

          I consider these things to indicate broken websites and leave immediately. If I care for the content I’ll find an archived version of the site elsewhere.

          That’s nice and all, unless the sites in question are sites you have to use for work. I ain’t got a choice.