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CAPTCHAs don't prove you're human – they prove you're American

47 points theanonymousone 47 minutes ago 44 comments

pestatije 33 minutes ago | parent

where do i collect my passport?

dgellow 17 minutes ago | parent

Ready to pay US taxes from anywhere in the world?

rurban 12 minutes ago | parent

People do pay taxes in the US? I paid almost nothing in Texas, thats why it looked like a shithole. No budget for anything. In Europe I love to pay taxes, because I see where it's going to

retired 10 minutes ago | parent

> In Western Europe

Fixed that for you.

retired 11 minutes ago | parent

-Post removed as rate limiting does not allow me to comment and keep the discussion going-

swiftcoder 9 minutes ago | parent

It's kind of a pain that you still have to file US taxes in this case. You may well end up paying zero in the US, but it's up to you to provide the necessary paperwork to show that your overseas income tax was high enough to cancel out the US income tax.

herbst 11 minutes ago | parent

No idea why you got downvoted. This is one of the most absurd and controlling thing the US does from the Perspektive of a non US person.

kybernetikos 24 minutes ago | parent

Other common issues - crosswalks and fire hydrants are common questions too, and crosswalks are not called that in most of the world and fire hydrants look pretty different depending on country.

TFNA 18 minutes ago | parent

This is perhaps a declining problem, as young people in so many countries are growing up as proficient US English speakers due to heavy social media consumption, to the point that US English CAPTCHA challenges would just feel normal. I suspect there are more young people around their world now for whom "crosswalk" is more natural than "zebra" -- in my country, the latter is already a shibboleth that one is an oldie who learned UK English, now regarded here as an antiquated standard after teaching switched to US English.

mcintyre1994 15 minutes ago | parent

Also a declining problem because any recent LLM can solve them all for you. FWIW though I don’t know anyone in the UK who uses the term crosswalk, though I think most would probably understand it in context.

pjc50 10 minutes ago | parent

Maybe we should ask Americans what a Belisha beacon is.

arrowsmith 5 minutes ago | parent

I'm British and I never knew that those yellow-ball-on-black-and-white-pole-by-pedestrian-crossing things are called Belisha beacons. TIL

wowczarek 2 minutes ago | parent

Identify a [PELICAN/PUFFIN/toucan] crossing. Good luck.

retired 16 minutes ago | parent

-Post removed as rate limiting does not allow me to comment and keep the discussion going-

mcintyre1994 14 minutes ago | parent

In the UK the captcha uses crosswalk, which isn’t the common name here.

OJFord 13 minutes ago | parent

Maybe it's translated, but it's definitely not localised. Captchas are nonsense in the UK, and a lot of Europe browses in English even if not their first language.

unwind 2 minutes ago | parent

Fire hydrants don't exist, they're just part of that cool media-pushed picture of some mythological place where things are ... weird and different.

KingOfCoders 21 minutes ago | parent

It's just forcing US culture on everyone in the world. Also see Meta deleting IG posts and banning people based on US politics / morals.

nephihaha 17 minutes ago | parent

Americans have changed/reversed a lot of political definitions including conservative/liberal.

herbst 12 minutes ago | parent

To be fair liberal and conservative is still used in it's actual sense whenever I hear it here in central Europe. US politics is barely a topic, even less something people actually care about.

asdfaoeu 2 minutes ago | parent

How has conservative changed?

lolakutty 9 minutes ago | parent

Oh come on!

The internet by default assumes you are a US citizen..

> forcing US culture on everyone in the world

I think captchas are on very near to the bottom on the list of things that tries (knowingly or unknowingly) does this...

retired 18 minutes ago | parent

-Post removed as rate limiting on HN does not allow me to comment and keep the discussion going-

nephihaha 16 minutes ago | parent

Not really in some countries taxis are specific vehicle types and clearly branded. American ones are ordinary cars with slight modifications.

retired 14 minutes ago | parent

And in that case the CAPTCHA would still work, as the vehicles are of the same type and have clear branding.

onion2k 2 minutes ago | parent

Is 'identify all the similar cars?' a valid capcha though? Surely knowing that something is a taxi is the important part of the test, and a good capcha would through in a branded car that isn't a taxi, which non-Americans are far more likely to fail.

raverbashing 8 minutes ago | parent

"slight modifications" it's entirely

In most places taxis can be identified as: having a specific color/color pattern and/or a ceiling fixture

It is by design because you want taxis to stand out from other vehicles

Havoc 12 minutes ago | parent

The fact that it can be deduced in some cases by some people is missing the point that a test of humanity shouldn't be country specific at all.

>The ones with liveries on the side that are all the same color.

Which is also not true for some countries...

jan_m_savage 17 minutes ago | parent

Some sites take this to a ridiculous extreme. Just try Haathi trust and it asks for a proof at EVERY refresh.

swiftcoder 17 minutes ago | parent

Even as someone who lived a long time in the US, I've failed a bunch of these on unclear definitions.

When you say "stoplights", is that just the lights themselves, or also the poles that support them? Is a tile that contains 1/3 of a bike wheel "bicycle" or "not bicycle"? Is a coach also considered a bus?

lemagedurage 10 minutes ago | parent

Being pedantic about the captcha is the less-human thing to do here.

swiftcoder 3 minutes ago | parent

I think I'm failing the captcha by not being sufficiently pedantic. It genuinely never occurred to me that a coach might not be considered a bus by the algorithm (where "algorithm" is presumably "distilled responses of many thousands of other humans")

kruffalon 3 minutes ago | parent

Ha! I guess I'm less human than expected, and finally I understand why I've failed sooooo many CAPTCHAs over the years :)

Thanks, I really never knew!

agons 3 minutes ago | parent

This comment doesn't help the pedant

skissane 2 minutes ago | parent

I actually found I had more success with reCAPTCHA when I made myself think less about what the answer was.

I also learned this trick that a lot of the questions have a standard number of answers – e.g. there are always three buses, or fire hydrants, or whatever – so once I've picked three, I'm done. (There often is a fourth ambiguous case, which it accepts but doesn't require.)

turbocon 16 minutes ago | parent

Interesting I very often get captchas to find motorcycles, crosswalks, and red lights that are definitely not from the US.

hannes0 15 minutes ago | parent

(2017)

AndyMcConachie 12 minutes ago | parent

Yes. Making meaning often requires context. The study of this is often referred to as pragmatics.

dgellow 11 minutes ago | parent

At this point I assume the captcha puzzle isn’t the actual check, just a distraction while they fingerprint your browser and behaviour to try to identify if you are more likely a human or not. Just my thoughts, I have absolutely no proof that’s the case, but I don’t believe labeling traffic light is still valuable, we are way, way past that

pjc50 9 minutes ago | parent

Some definitely fail you if you answer too quickly.

jeroenhd 5 minutes ago | parent

The big sell on reCAPTCHA v3 was that it did all the fingerprinting beforehand. Only when fingerprinting failed to prove your humanity, you'd get shown a puzzle.

I've tried intentionally answering the prompts wrong and correctness is definitely a factor here (although low bot scores seem to permit you more mistakes). That doesn't mean fingerprinting is not happening while you're solving the puzzles, but it's more than just a distraction.

minraws 4 minutes ago | parent

Correction: they only prove exposure to American media/culture... I could solve captcha and understand most of it from having seen a dozen or so American shows and movies over my teenage years... Even before I ever travelled to America.

reassess_blind 4 minutes ago | parent

Those do appear to be San Francisco taxis and I agree with the overall sentiment, but the US is not the only country with yellow taxis.

Taiwan, Colombia, Ecuador, Australia, and many European countries all have (not exclusively, but they do have) yellow taxis.

Maybe "Prove you're not English" is really their intention.