UK Gov doesn’t allow CAPTCHAs on central gov services: https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/technology/using-captchas

They can still use them if they meet certain criteria, and show that they 'need' them. The overuse probably comes from the incentive - Google is incentivized to encourage the use of captcha because it is curating a data collection for ai training. I imagine some of the 'gaslighting' that people experience is when they are given images that don't yet have a confidence rating high enough. I wonder if answering incorrectly often enough would result in being asked fewer questions?

(I used to work at GDS)

‘Need’ here means exhausted all other opportunities, and have built alternative accessible ways of accessing the same service. I’d certainly have expected a service to have investigated a self-hosted solution, and I doubt a reliance on 3rd party JS from a Google service would fly, regardless of the service, as it breaks a whole bunch of separate resilience guidelines.

The few times I couldn't avoid Recaptcha, I spent 5 minutes randomly clicking on image tiles. Sometimes I got through by this strategy. If it didn't work, I tried a less random approach.

It will let you through eventually, even when intentionally selecting wrong fields, when you do it often enough.

So frustrated people give up, but tireless bots will get through? That sounds like the exact opposite it's supposed to accomplish.

I've even seen state and government sites using Google's reCAPTCHA. People shouldn't be required to hand over their browsing history and other information to Google for essential services, especially to use government websites.

Thankfully, Indian government websites still use their own captchas - which though not as 'secure', works for most of the cases, and don't take minutes to solve.

It this case they get to deal with me offline. Like I'm using a credit card right now without internet banking. They send me letters, on paper, with how much I owe them and then I pay. All because registering for their internet banking was a crazy shitty experience that I abandoned.

I default to paper mail with things like written checks for that sort of thing. Never had a problem.

Of course if it's an essential service like healthcare, formal education, paying bills etc. people will be forced to use it (if there's no option to change that service itself). But for that fancy startup showing some content for to consume when it's not necessary, I will just close that website.

i say the same thing to my friend in a wheelchair -- "suck it up handycapper and pull yourself up the stairs".

there was a time not long ago before wheelchair ramps or accessible doors were commonplace. these people were literally shut out of society.

its the same with captcha forcing privacy-conscious users off the internet.

Uh, using a wheelchair vs walking is a lot less of a personal choice than using Firefox vs Chrome.

Or: people who need a wheelchair are protected by anti-discriminatory laws, while people who prefer not to use Google products aren't.

uh, captchas don't just appear on Google products. Third parties use it -- government services, online shopping, all kinds of things you take for granted because clearly you aren't one of the people affected by it (ie you're fingerprinted). Many things we used to do in physical space now occurs virtually. There is a serious philosophical and moral case to be made for the relevance of privacy and anonymity that captcha is specifically and nefariously working to erode. And in that sense it's worse than bad building codes.

I suspect the Google product that the GP was referring to was Chrome, given that this is a co, ent thread about Firefox vs Chrome, and the behaviour of another Google product (recaptcha) betwee the aforementioned products.