A new form of state-level internet filtering that restricts data flow is disrupting access to large portions of the global web for Russian citizens. Cloudflare, the world leader in DDoS protection and high-traffic load management, is being targeted by these new data caps, which appear designed to push users toward Russian-controlled services. Meanwhile, the move leaves Russian businesses dangerously exposed.
Care to expand on that? Why are captchas bad?
Because they are anti-vpn and thus anti-privacy.
Sorry, I assumed this was already common knowledge. There’s another thread fork from a comment.
Tl;dr they’re not good at their purpose and cause unneeded annoyance to users.
Idk man, I’ve seen hundreds of examples showcasing how they significantly reduce bot traffic. The point isn’t to make it impossible for a bot to get past it, it’s to make it so expensive per request that it’s not worth it.
I’m not saying the effect on bot traffic is none
Agree
And the cloudflare ones are broken as fuck. It varies but I often just can’t pass them. Answer it, wheel goes round and then back to having to tick it and start again. Beep boop.
If I see a cloudflare check I often just don’t bother loading the site at all.
Yeah cloudflare gets a similar reaction as a paywall. Fuck this site, I’ll go somewhere else
Why is this bad
Wasting time on useless obstacles is bad
The obstacles serve a specific purpose though. Do you believe this purpose is unimportant?
As usual, the purpose doesn’t justify the means. The goal could and should be achieved without this nonsense
How so?
These active captchas instead of methods not visible to the user are worse at hindering nefarious use than regular
They’re meant to prevent bot traffic to sites and protect from DDOS attacks
Except that bots already have a higher pass rate than humans, so the captcha isn’t even good at preventing bots.
they also often prevent legitimate traffic from poorer countries, and aggressively so
I do not believe they limit it themselves, they just follow setting set by others. You can choose to block all traffic from certain counties of you want. Or not.
i meant other types of captchas as well, but yes, cloudflare is fairly configurable. I also know other captchas can be more aggressive. And of course captchas can also block or harass “high privacy” configuration browsers and clients, and there’s also the strategy of infinite delay, where a captcha is never quite sure you’re really a human, so you have to work through 12 phases of it only to have to do the exact same thing again the next time you’re on the site. Recaptcha V3 with its “automatic” background captcha is also in a surprising amount of places you’d never know about unless you’re infected with some kind of The-Mainstream-Internet-Hates-You disease. Captchas discriminating against poor countries isn’t some big secret though, as far as I’m aware it’s fairly well known.
Well thems the breaks!
What the other commenter said and also accessibility issues, aand overall this is a problem which shouldn’t face the end user at all. Just browsing has become just a nuisance after a nuisance nowadays. Just like cookie modals not adhering to browser settings or hiding the reject all behind extra steps.
Yeah would be sick if LLMs and bots just disappeared overnight
Captchas ain’t stopping them anyway