> and getting all your semi-public records and social media activity immediately > scraped by shady companies and sold to anybody who expresses any interest.

Public content on the Internet should be scrapable. That's what public means.

The fact that my reddit posts were publicly available never bothered me. Even if they were going to be used to train some LMM. What does bother me is reddit locking up my posts and making exclusive deals with Google to train Google's LMM.

Preventing scraping isn't good for the average user; it is good for the company that wants to take content created by said user, lock it up, and sell it to their buddies.

And the very angry email that I (probably unwisely) just dashed off to support@hcaptcha.com:

"So I've been trying to sign in repeatedly to set the accessibility cookie since last night. Every time I click the submit button, I get the useless error message "an error has occurred, please try again".

My friend, who shares my roof and my static IP, got banned from hcaptcha's accessibility service last year for being too smart to be blind. And I suspect you all have banned our IP and not just his account.

For the record, my static IP address is (redacted).

See https://michaels.world/2023/11/i-was-banned-from-the-hcaptch... for his story. I have been broadcasting this to websites frequented by technically capable people: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42171164 https://lobste.rs/s/qbkd0u/i_was_banned_from_hcaptcha_access...

Please let your bosses know that I plan to pursue legal action against hCaptcha and/or amplify the truth to destroy its reputation in the public square. I will also be reaching out to websites who utilize hCaptcha, letting them know that the captcha provider they employ is refusing to provide reasonable accomodations to blind people.

Whether it be with the force of law or the force of satyagraha, your bosses are going to get a message and we will win.

And their thoroughly unhelpful reply:

"Hi there, sorry to hear you're having difficulties!

We have an alternative authentication scheme that you may prefer: https://www.hcaptcha.com/accessibility

You can sign up here: https://dashboard.hcaptcha.com/signup?type=accessibility

This lets you avoid the challenge altogether after registration.

It is designed for users with any kind of difficulty solving the challenges.

Thanks for reaching out, and hope this makes your experience better."

Yes, hashcash.

Here's the thing. We're talking about people who are the accessibility team for hCaptcha. They should at least have a figleaf of an understanding of life for blind people.

The other problem we have is that online companies tend to be accountable to no one. Short of law suits, my friend who got banned from hCaptcha for "not being blind" has no recourse, because nobody is accountable.