I heard someone was forced to solve a Google reCAPTCHA in the course of applying for unemployment in Ohio.

I’m not sure of the circumstances but the user would not have been using Tor, so it is likely imposed on everyone. They said they were unsure if there was an analog alternative (during COVID).

The Secretary of State (SoS) for most (if not all) states maintain a database of registered companies. This basic dataset is needed to lookup how a company is registered, their contact info, status, etc. Most queries have come to impose a CAPTCHA.

If you fax or mail a request for records, the SoS offices simply ignore it without even the courtesy to respond. So if you boycott Google, you’re fucked. The state makes you choose between access to “public” records, and witholding your labor and data from Google. Can’t have it both ways.

Unless you make a FOIA request, in which case you have to pay the state for the info.

This thread could be used to document the states that push this shitty practice on people.

From the article:

“In terms of cost, we estimate that – during over 13 years of its deployment – 819 million hours of human time has been spent on reCAPTCHA, which corresponds to at least $6.1 billion USD in wages. Traffic resulting from reCAPTCHA consumed 134 Petabytes of bandwidth, which translates into about 7.5 million kWhs of energy, corresponding to 7.5 million pounds of CO₂. In addition, Google has potentially profited $888 billion USD from cookies and $8.75-32.3 billion USD per each sale of their total labeled data set.”

This means when a CAPTCHA serves as a barrier between people and an essential public transaction, people are being forced into involuntary uncompensated servitude. I believe this is a human rights issue.