The bitch is when you're forced to use their products whether you like it or not. Case in point recaptcha. Also many users are not in the least aware of the trade going on, and the magnitude and invasiveness of the surveillance.
Many government websites use reCAPTCHA. I do not have any choice in using it. If I were to block Google to avoid tracking, I could not function in society.
I had to use a reCAPTCHA on a government web site last week, and Google's stupid AI refused to accept that a picture of a wheelchair is not a bicycle. They both have spokes, so I must be a bot.
Note to self: Never get in a vehicle steered by Google AI.
It gets even funnier for non-english speakers. ReCaptcha gets translated to your language, and sometimes it doesn't make sense.
For instance, let's say that the thing makes you mark images of "toes". If you get the captcha in spanish, it will say imagenes de "dedos".
The funny part is that "dedo" in spanish means both "finger" and "toe". The only way you can distinguish is by saying "dedo de la mano" or "dedo del pie" (which would literally translate to "finger of the hand" or "finger of the foot").
Hence, you click on both images containing "toes" and "fingers", and the freaking thing decides you must be a bot. If you can speak english you'll figure out eventually, but if you only speak spanish you are screwed.
Funnily enough, Google translate does translate "toe" to "dedo del pie" and "finger" to "dedo".
Which makes me wonder what the same captcha would say in French. In French, "doigt", while technically for both toes and fingers, is usually unambiguously "finger", and "toes" is "doigts de pied".
So if the captcha would pull the same joke in French, telling to flag "doigts", I, as a French, would only pick fingers and not toes at all.
The gov.uk guys have figured out this problem. As usual, the US NIH syndrome gets in the way. Give the UK guys a call, 18F. Learn how to do this right.
Again, Google is not forcing them to use ReCAPTCHA anywhere. You seem to have an issue with that program, so why are you taking it out on Google instead of on your government?
