this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2026
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Privacy
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Name one way
How about at a random interval once every couple months it will ask you to draw a picture of a cat in the browser and if it finds your drawing process too similar or the image too similar to one that's already in the database it will flag it without telling you. Three strikes and your out kinda rule. It's like drug tests but for the internet.
Even if you did, like, a line across the screen to save time there's no way in hell it'd be the same as anything else in that database unless you are extremely unlucky.
So you are suggesting captchas? I used to make a living running a bot farm and whenever my bots would be promoted with a captcha I'd have it solved by a service like 2captcha for the low cost of 0.3cents per captcha
Kinda, yeah. I was trying to come up with a captcha that's hard for a bot but incredibly easy for a human. The random intervals was to make it harder to automate and that's the idea I had off the top of my head. I just feel like captchas have had wasted potential for years and people kinda gave up on improving them.
Sorry dude, but this comment makes it clear you have no idea what you're talking about. If I'm given an assignment to write a program that generates a huge variety of novel cat drawings, which won't register the same in this database, I bet I could personally single handedly have that done in a week of work.
Some other problems :
Many real humans will draw roughly similar cats. Unless you compare the drawings pixel by pixel, or very precisely, then there will be lots of false positives.
If you then decide to compare the drawings pixel by pixel or very precisely, then I can trivially generate new drawings by altering them. I have plenty of time to reverse engineer how your database is comparing things even though you don't tell me when I get a strike because I can make lots of fake accounts via hiding my IP address and run experiments by feeding different variations of drawings and seeing which ones eventually get banned.
If you ask once every couple of months, then my bot gets to do three times whatever that duration of months is worth of damage and misinformation before it gets banned. That's a pretty long time, especially for a bot. I can deploy new bots much faster than your system gets rid of them.
As Anivia pointed out, I can pay real humans to draw the different cats for my bots when needed. This is especially trivial because I can just ask them to draw a whole bunch of cats in advance. I don't even need to wait for the cue from the system. I can just have a big library of pre-drawn cat drawings that I upload as needed.
Cool, you don't have to be a dick about it. :P
Sorry, I wasn't trying to be a dick, just being honest. I felt it was important to correct your unjustified confidence in the original comment where you claimed many such solutions exist
But why do you need to talk down to me like I'm an idiot instead of just correct me politely? I'm genuinely curious because it seems to be a very common thing nowadays where percieved confident incorrectness and ignorance is met with distain and anger. I didn't mean to offend anyone when I made this comment and was simply brainstorming while bored at work.
Let me first clarify that I think you seem very nice and I'm not mad at you, nor do I have any intent to make you feel bad. I think you're misreading my tone, tbh. That or I'm expressing my tone poorly.
So, I thought I did correct you politely, within the bounds of also needing to make very clear and unambiguous that you needed to adjust your confidence when talking about this subject. I have no issue with someone idly brainstorming ideas, but in the context of your original comment "There are so many ways to do human verification that have worked for years.", which you didn't qualify in any way, you sounded completely authoritative and sure of yourself. Since you yourself even know that you are ignorant on this topic, to me a better phrasing would be to preface that with something like "I think..." Or "It seems like...", or even outright saying "I don't really know about this stuff, but..." Etc.
It's definitely hard to tell someone's tone when it comes to text so i appreciate you mentioning that. I understand the confusion as I wasnt very clear in what I was talking about which is 100% my fault. I went a little off the handle and got defensive, I will admit, and I apologize for that.
I guess the point that I was trying to make is more so that we have many different ways to do it for years I was talking about things like captchas. The problem, in my opinion, is that captchas didn't evolve with the Internet. We've been picking traffic lights for over a decade now and it's obviously not working anymore. My whole idea with drawing pictures was to make it more human centric than clicking a bunch if buttons. Something that can take in the raw input of a mouse cursor or touchscreen and determine whether or not the movements are "human". Like a fingerprint that doesn't identify you. I just feel like there's a lot of wasted potential in older human verification systems that have stagnated. We've just accepted bots as the norm online and the company's in charge aren't doing a damn thing besides saying they'll do something with no action.
Because you made a dumb claim with confidence. You were talked down to because you were acting like a fool. Which you're still doing btw.
Yeah well I don't really care for your opinion and I wasn't talking to you. I appreciate the feedback, though. The person above seems like they actually have social skills outside of calling people "chuds" and "neckbeards" as their only respone so I'd much rather talk to them tbh
Captchas back in the day were solved by humans in bot farms. Yes they are humans but not the right ones.
That was kinda my idea with the whole random and unexpected checking in. It's easy to get humans to do it for bot farms when you have deterministic times in which you'd have to perform the captcha. Nowadays most simple captchas can be done by bots so I was brainstorming a way you could make it harder for the bots while being minimally intrusive to the user.
Speak to a customer service agent while they ask you a few timed-dated questions
Video chat with a customer service agent.
if it's a real name account:
Small credit card charge to a card in your name.
provide a scan of a utility bill
provide a scan of a car title
All of Those are a deal breaker for me.
I could see the first one, if it all takes place in a chatbox. Like, they have someone talk to you in chat for a few minutes to verify if you pass the turing test, then randomly once a month do it again.
With the proper setup that would be acceptable.
Unfortunately they would have to pay people to do it so probably never happen. Although seeing them try to implement an LLM to try to tell if humans pass the Turing test would be kind of hilarious.
An llm doing it is not acceptable I do not think.
As we all know, they are completely full of shit here, they allow and encourage the majority of the bots on their platforms because it inflates their numbers.
As such any system they set up will not be trustworthy in this regard.
if all forms of verification are deal breakers, we either need to get laws made to make it unlawful, or we need to boycot services that require it.
The government is still going to do whatever it wants, and they already mishandle all your data.
Boycott, get around, defy, deny depose.
People forget that glass bottles and gasoline are (relatively) inexpensive
That's why the stuck Iran, to close the straight and make gas more expensive ;)
I don't think we have enough gumption to actually do it, but here's to hoping.
Deny, defy, depose..
So instead of face scans or giving them my ID I have a video call with them and give them access to all my sensitive data? Am I missing something here?
all what sensitive data?
You don't consider your credit card information sensitive data?
Not when you can generally make a 1 time use card, or a "virtual" card that most brands offer. Granted the only places I've seen this type of verification used is where you're going to buy something anyways.
I give it to a dozen different vendors a month. It's sitting in probably 20 vendors on the web right now just waiting for me to pay with it. I tell it to people over the phone. Giving it as a small charge, verification is the least of my worries.
Place age-verification on routers and keep it there.
Just open it all up to everyone. Fuck it. There's a point we all just get bored of it
Wait, the guy at the top of the chain asked human verification, not age verification...
Any verification is wrong. Like everything in life, it will only impose a restriction on people who don't have the ability to circumvent it at best. The only reason this would go forward is if it can be used against those people somehow. Data collection. Censorship.
Need to go the other way. Lean in not away. Look at why bots exist. Find ways to jam that system up. Like if it's a bot trying to promote a new movie. Every comment should be shitting on that movie. If it's a bot in November trying to post the latest drop ship night light star projector on r/coolstufftotallynotjustads well I'm pretty sure my cousin bought that lamp and was the reason his house burned down. For a couple years let's fuck it all up. Make the internet inhospitable to politics, business, advertisers. If it's some racist Facebook group, they pay ads to promote their bot group, so post it here on lemmy and report spam the group since they use bots to moderate. Chase them the fuck out. If they try to stop us it'll cost them millions and us nothing to find new ways. Their option is to either restrict us to the point their platforms suck or they have to increase the number of bots costing them more and more and more until it's not worth it. Go to fucking war with them and take the internet back instead of going the route of giving DNA samples to some 3rd party owned by meta just to look at porn.
I don't know. I'm just done with it all. I like to image a world 20 years ago where we all saw the internet moving towards corporate interest and we chased them out. Instead they now create a problem and sell the solution and we all clap and fucking cheer
Hitler was much easier to kill as a baby. That's all.
After I posted this I came across a topic that is likely filled with bots pumping it. Get in early. Look for indicators. Tag and bag them. But there's needs to be some type of community for this. Like a scambaiters
"Famous Influencer Druski under flame for doing "Whiteface" after a video of him making fun of Erika Kirk surfaced online.."