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Comment by DominikPeters | Hacker News Reader

I see this as high-IQ software developers building systems to shut out non-high-IQ people from society. Managers look at these CAPTCHAs and think "oh I could solve these no problem, let's use them". In fact, they can only be solved by unusually smart people or by ML bots. Arkose Labs (the maker of this particular captcha) explicitly advertises that their methods can keep out "low-skilled workers" on "human fraud farms". They keep out everyone else too if they're not that good at mental rotation and mental arithmetic or logic -- this dice puzzle and the mouse labyrinth puzzle are pretty much prototypical IQ test problems.

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Not sure I agree with your “opressive” high-IQ developers spin, but it’s clear that whoever implements this kind of captcha (even the not-so-challenging ones) doesn’t give a shit about user experience and deserve to metaphorically-speaking, burn in hell. I think it’s just an example for how developers should not make decisions about UI or UX in general. It doesn’t really matter how hard to solve the captcha is, it shouldn’t exist in the first place, even those with: “pick all the fire hydrants”.

AirBNB doesn't want bots scraping their data.

They currently have a monopoly on STR listings - so they don't really need to care about user experience.

This is what you end up with.

> AirBNB doesn't want bots scraping their data

They’re likely also trying to push users to their app.

I've never understood this concept. Reddit is the worst, though at least you can argue that they probably have all the figures to back up the idea that engagement is much higher when they push someone onto the app. For a travel app which you are only using a few times a year I can't imagine this holds.

It seems like it's product managers justifying their investment in the native applications in a lot of cases.

Lots easier to collect user data without having to worry about inconvenient browser privacy protections?

A company I worked for in the past explicitly made the mobile web version worse so people would use the app. They did it because with the app they could send offers through push notifications. Ugh.

I don't know why so many people leave so many notifications active. I've even had people tell me that lack of notifications are the reason they don't like just using web sites on mobile.

It also is more likely when to users to come back after stopping using the app for a while if it's still installed and as such they can "stumble" about it.

Anyway the most well known example is probably YT which slowly reduced over time the functionality of their Web version for mobile, and also put things in to make it more annoying, too.

There is one simple reason: it's harder to block ads in the app version.

Does the airbnb app or website even serve third party ads?

It's less useful to focus on this single example, and more on the industry. Once these types of ideas gain momentum, they just become to be accepted as truth.

"If everybody else pushes users to their app over web, there must be good reasons to do it, we should too."

Expecting companies to rationally analyzed whether that is actually the case, is, well, expecting too much of companies.

I built a client for their mobile API a while ago. Send it through Tor. That was the plan but I decided the project itself wasn’t worth it.

Come to think of it, does GDPR apply to apps?

Yes

It applies to all data, no matter how it was collected, including manually and for employees, with some minor exceptions for small companies.

I'm fairly certain that Airbnb used to give their data away on a different website. I used the dataset in my undergrad.

They have a monopoly on STR listings? I use VRBO at least as often (probably more) than AirBnb.

It does seem like a very bizarre thing to say. As if GPT-3 decided to comment on HN.

VRBO made 2 billion in bookings, which is impressive but still less than one fourth of AirBnb.

It's a pointless war and their data is all over the place. With millions of residential IPs scraping data, its not possible to keep data in public and not get it scraped. All they are doing is making it worth someone's time to put it all together and provide a near realtime api for all the scraped data. Same goes for amazon and anyone who thinks they can protect their data.

Airbnb gives their data away. http://insideairbnb.com/get-the-data.html

This looks to be an activist project focused on shutting out Airbnb, check out the about page.

There are some very American ones such as the fire hydrants that really catch me out as someone who's not American, I can only imagine what it's like for those with English as a second language.

Oh ya, it's really funny.

It can be a problem even for Google Captcha.

Like:

- Taxies are not yellow in all countries

- Fire hydrants like that aren't a thing in many countries either (e.g. in Germany they are below a small hatch in the ground)

- US School Busses

- Even Street Signs can look and be placed very different.

- What is recognized as a shop/restaurant and similar based on the style of the sign board

But that is typical SV: Solving problems for the US from a US perspective and assuming it works in most countries.

But most countries are _not_ like the US.

It reminds me of a thread the other week about data protections in france. People were complaining about not being able to have a one size fits all solution for all jurisdictions (and that that one size should have US style limited data protections).

The idea that stuck with me from it is that we’ve been spoiled as devs by the early low hanging fruit version of the internet. The MVPs were enough better than non-digital incumbents that we could just export california everywhere.

> In fact, they can only be solved by unusually smart people

Wut? Have you actually ever met a person who can't? I always suspected the electoral majority is not particularly bright (which sort of contradicts the idea of near-100 being an average IQ nevertheless) but if this is "unusually smart" then things feel really creepy.

The average IQ by definition is 100. In civilised countries it is above that.

That's why I wrote near-100 rather than 100. I know it can be closer to 110 or to 80 in specific countries/states. Pollution is proven to harm average IQ, other aspects of the living conditions during childhood can harm average person mental development also. It has been mentioned here on HN a number of times that childhood lead poisoning harmed mental development of a huge part of American population.

In some definitions of civil, the US would not qualify.

I never met one in person, but in email support, yes.

And it makes sense.

Statistically, an IQ of 100 is the population median, meaning, assuming a Gaussian repartition (which it usually is for human traits), that's about 10% of people scoring around 80 or lower.

To give an idea of what level of intelligence this means, we can wonder what that kind of people cannot do?

In the US, the military don't do a systematic IQ test for recruitment, but when they did one, it was deemed illegal to induct any one if they possessed an IQ less than or equal to 81.

That means 1 person out of 10 is not intelligent enough to be in the lowest rank in the army.

It's not far fetched to think of the possibility that some functioning members of society are not capable of solving mental problems most humanity think are trivial.

In fact, that are also trivial for AI, although we may all end up to fall into that basket one day or the other.

>Wut? Have you actually ever met a person who can't?

I have met a few, yes, including people who are intellectually limited (colloquially called "dumb"), people who were born or acquired mental handicaps, people who are suffering most likely suffering from dyscalculia (dyslexia for arithmetic/numbers). E.g. we think my grandma might have had a milder form of the latter, as she had a lot of trouble adding up numbers in particular, which would have made this CAPTCHA very hard for her - but not impossible. And a friend of my mom has Turner syndrome, which is linked to dyscalculia, and she is indeed very bad at basic math.

In most of the cases you mentioned, that would be considered a handicap though. In such cases it's a failing on adding an accesability option or secondary option.

Among people, who aren't straight up unable due to handicaps, who couldn't solve them? It seems easy enough that mostly anyone could.

If your starting position is that dyslexia and dyscalculia are handicaps that mean people need to be treated differently, you're failing right out of the gate.

They are quite common problems with a wide spectrum of severity.

Back when you could take your car to a local garage, your car would very likely be repaired by a very clever person who was dyslexic (even dyscalculate) because as a career, men in particular who struggled with written language (or even modestly complex maths -- differential gear yes, differential equation no) could do it and thrive at it.

Should that person be treated as handicapped if they need to fill in a form? Or should forms not be designed to make people waste their time with puzzles or kafkaesque processes of any kind?

> Have you actually ever met a person who can't?

Certainly, when I read this I immediately thought of three.

I have met people who can't and people who won't. Also, a lot of people in their 50s and above aren't solving this.

I’m 43. What exactly happens once I turn 50 that I will no longer be able to add a couple of single digit numbers?

Incidentally, how old are you, and do you have any involvement with IT hiring?

A study was making the rounds last week saying that the brain stays "sharp" until 60. Presumably 60 is an average which means people in their 50s will start to see some decline.

I think they should do some studies whether there’s any basis to my observation of a sudden sharp rise in IQ among SDEs once they reach mid-30ies, as they seem to suddenly want to be treated as adults and no longer fall for foosball tables, slides, colorful company attire, and free vending machine lunches as a substitute for being treated like people. ;)

Coming back to the topic, it’s interesting how this IQ cliff seems to exclusively affect ICs in IT, while somehow spares all of the middle and upper management, that all seems to be on top of their compensation game as they gracefully age ever so upwards in titles.

I think you would need some statistics to back up the over 50s argument. If I were to give an instinctive opinion it would be that under 40s are poor at mental arithmetic because they have always had a machine to do it for them whereas over 50s can split a bill in their heads quite quickly.

I know some quite clever people who could not solve this, for different reasons.

One of the brightest, quickest witted people I know experiences significant dyslexia and dyscalculia. She would fail at this and it would make her quietly angry at you for making her go through it.

I also know someone with a vision disorder who would struggle.

Hell, when I am tired, I would have to close one eye to pass -- I have this issue with quite a lot of captchas, and I am not legally vision-impaired. And I would be angry at the developer for making me struggle.

Furthermore, I think in a world with an ageing population it might be worth considering that puzzles like this are a bit like early dementia tests. It's worth thinking what data gets collected when the world is asked to perform brainteasers to gain access to essential functions.

I personaly know some people for whom solving OP's puzzle would require enough effort and take long enough that they'd just complain and drop it.

Here is a video about how to solve this captcha. The comments clearly indicate that many people are having trouble with this kind of captcha.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGl2SMg4rU4

> Have you actually ever met a person who can't?

Regardless of the answer to that, it focuses on the wrong problem.

The problem is the user-hostile concept of captchas in the first place. Imagine going to a brick and mortar store (or travel agency) and being forced to solve some ridiculous puzzle to be allowed inside to do a transaction.

It's not ok in physical life, it's not ok on a commerce website.

I think you're flattering yourself a bit if you believe that being able to solve a CAPTCHA means you have an unusually high IQ

You've never spent much time around lower IQ people, I take it. The type of people who drive trucks, or bag groceries, and will never be able to do more than that. Good people, most of them, of course. But allergic to logical, deliberate thought, and barely capable of it when they try. Not everyone can do basic math, and many of those who can't, have no problem booking a hotel.

These CAPTCHAs require more thought than the platform otherwise does, therefore it will gate some people from using the platform.

If I could only give more upvotes. I'm one of the few self-taught tech employees I've met at AWS. And I'm consistently told (during yearly reviews and casually) that my ability to communicate tech issues simply to both tech and non-tech people is my 'super power'.

Lots of CS grads who went immediately to a high-paid CS positions have no clue how to distill complex topics into jargon-free statements that are readily understood. And this lack of self-awareness (i.e. they don't understand that they're using specialized terms and/or skills) bleeds into everything they do.

I can see a bunch of engineers sitting in a review meeting all agreeing 'This is simple math. Let's do it!' Unless there's someone from a non-tech background in the meeting, there's unlikely to be someone saying 'Uh, our audience is people wanting a place to sleep. We shouldn't gate our service with math.'

A High-IQ Software developer:

- Calculates the sum on the first picture

- Reads the instructions

- Reads the instructions again

- Stares at the six pictures for one second

- Closes the page

In other words captcha use on some essential services might be a case for the courts if those services are thereby inaccessible.

They don’t even have to be essential services. US equal rights law would apply to any public accommodation - AirBnB being a perfect example

They don't even keep out low skilled workers as they don't need much IQ, at least for a worker who is repeatedly solving them and was thought the best approach to do so.

What they keep out is people with Discalculia, which are in no way stupid or low IQ, just can't to math well. (They also would probably be able to do it, but probably take to long and/or get offended enough to not do it).

I thought these captcha companies made money by selling image classification services? Isn’t it possible that someone wanted these dice images classified for some machine learning project to do with dice?

I wonder if they are doing businesses in the EU especially Germany, because then they would be pretty much in breach of the German constitution and even admitting to doing so intentionally...

How do I get to play with this?

I want to know if I would be filtered out

You can go to https://www.twilio.com/login/password and enter a fake email address and repeated fake passwords. Or one of the addresses listed here: https://github.com/dessant/buster/issues/178 Though I got pretty easy ones trying it.

twilio site actually prompts a captcha after a few unsuccessful login tries but it just says "Pick any square". I've tried a few times and clicking any of the 6 options underneath work lol.

Proof of work. I wonder if these mental exercises do increase IQ.

They increase puzzle solving abilities/speed, just like any practice. Which means it increases the IQ measure, but not what people think IQ stands for.

A few studies a while back showed that those 'brain training' apps on the Nintendo consoles didn't actually improve any IQ or mental agility, so it's fair to say that these sort of captchas or similar systems don't either.

https://www.sciencealert.com/do-brain-training-games-really-...

At least you'll get better at solving that particular kind of problem.

So if IQ is defined as your ability to solve that kind of problem, then yes, your IQ will increase.

It isn't.

They improve your ability of doing them.

Wait are you really suggesting that the Airbnb programmers thought "guys, we need to stop low-IQ people from using our site"?? That's crazy.

> explicitly advertises that their methods can keep out "low-skilled workers" on "human fraud farms"

Uhm yeah. They're trying to keep people from human fraud farms (who happen to be low-skilled workers) out. It's not a weird elitist conspiracy to keep all low-IQ people from society out.

Why is HN so full of paranoid conspiracy theories?

How do you think they distinguish a low-skilled worker working for a human fraud farm from a low-skilled worker not working for a human fraud farm?

They don't need to distinguish between those cases. They just need to make the cost of solving the captchas (either automatically or by paying a farm of low-skilled workers to solve them) higher than the value of the abuse.

Missing the point, which is that unless you can distinguish, then an action that stops low-skilled workers from getting through will stop those people whether or not they're doing it for fraud or because they're a genuine customer.

It's probably not their intent to stop the latter, but the effect is still discriminatory.

I don't. We're talking about intent.

> paranoid

In this case one (excluding "human fraud farms") and the other (excluding people who would work, but currently don't work, at human fraud farms) are the same thing. Not at all paranoid, in other words :)

That's not what is paranoid. OP was suggesting that they are deliberately trying to keep low-IQ people out as part of some elitist plot, and this is simply the best way to do it.

Rather than the obvious boring reality which is that this is intended to keep low-skilled Indian captcha solvers out and as an unfortunate side effect also keeps low-IQ people out.

When you get to a certain level of smartness and responsibility you don't get to shrug and say "oh well I never saw this coming".

Nobody is suggesting that they didn't see it coming. The conspiracy is that they wanted it to happen.

Why is HN so full of paranoid conspiracy theories?

Because many of us have been to this rodeo before.

The history of the tech industry has no shortage of thought leaders, heroes, and jabbering masses with low morals and feet on both sides of the eugenics theory.

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