CAPTCHAs are 'a tracking cookie farm for profit that made us spend 819 billion hours clicking to generate nearly $1 trillion for Google

mox · 3 days ago

CAPTCHAs are 'a tracking cookie farm for profit that made us spend 819 billion hours clicking to generate nearly $1 trillion for Google

@[email protected] · 2 days ago

The details are horrific:

819 million hours spent solving CAPTCHAs.

$6.1 billion worth of our time at the US federal minimum wage.

134 Petabytes of internet bandwidth.

consuming 7.5 million kWhs of energy.

which produced 7.5 million pounds of CO2 pollution.

This one’s from the author of the article: putting the 819 million hours against the average human lifespan of 79 years, that’s 1,182.7 lifetimes spent solving CAPTCHAs.

@[email protected] · 2 days ago

Compare it to some stats for some truly useless Internet services if you really want to make a point

CAPTCHAs are 'a tracking cookie farm for profit that made us spend 819 billion hours clicking to generate nearly $1 trillion for Google

CAPTCHAs are 'a tracking cookie farm for profit that made us spend 819 billion hours clicking to generate nearly $1 trillion for Google

A 2023 study concluded CAPTCHAs are 'a tracking cookie farm for profit masquerading as a security service' that made us spend 819 billion hours clicking on traffic lights to generate nearly $1 trillion for Google