A 2023 study concluded CAPTCHAs are 'a tracking cookie farm for profit masquerading as a security service' that made us spend 819 million hours clicking on traffic lights to generate nearly $1 trillion for Google
www.pcgamer.com
Is that good?

Not just tracking cookies, but browser fingerprinting.

Not just Google, but now Cloudflare.

  • Showroom7561@lemmy.ca
    351·
    2 days ago

    The details are horrific:

    • 819 million hours spent solving CAPTCHAs.
    • $6.1 billion worth of our time at the US federal minimum wage.
    • 134 Petabytes of internet bandwidth.
    • consuming 7.5 million kWhs of energy.
    • which produced 7.5 million pounds of CO2 pollution.
    • This one’s from the author of the article: putting the 819 million hours against the average human lifespan of 79 years, that’s 1,182.7 lifetimes spent solving CAPTCHAs.
    • bluemite@lemmy.world
      46·
      2 days ago

      Compare it to some stats for some truly useless Internet services if you really want to make a point