🏡 It’s About Time To Ditch Captcha In 2024

77 600 houses could be built each year if we wouldn’t have to solve captcha. But year after year, captchas are still wasting our time and money. 2024 is a great year to ditch captcha alltogether.

Captcha And Printers Are The Same

The other day I had to do some things online that I postponed for a while. One of these was to unsubscribe from a newsletter I didn’t need anymore.

It was my last task for that day and I was left with 5 minutes to finish it. I’ve headed to the website of the company with the link provided in the email.

To unsubscribe I had to log in to the account and click one checkbox to disable the email subscription. A perfect task to be done in 5 minutes.

I was able to write this article, because people read it on Medium

On the login page I was welcomed by a captcha to verify I’m a human person. Because I was in hurry I’ve clicked all the photos showing sidewalks.

Unfortunately I missed one. So I’ve started to click the photos fast to finish that very last task before I had to go to an appointed dentist visit.

To my surprise I was presented with more and more photos and after clicking sidewalks after sidewalks I couldn’t get past it. 5 minutes passed and I had to give up for that day.

It’s almost like a printer, captcha senses when you’re in hurry.

How Captcha Was Born

Human based computation alongside with social media were my two primary research fields in the computer science. The way both were implemented in today’s world fill me with disappointment.

Clap if you like the article so far!

But the beginning of captcha was exciting. As Wikipedia states:

Human-based computation (HBC), human-assisted computation,[1] ubiquitous human computing or distributed thinking (by analogy to distributed computing) is a computer science technique in which a machine performs its function by outsourcing certain steps to humans, usually as microwork.