[EtDybNuvCu]

Let us analyze this further. Suppose that Alice browses 4chan. 4chan uses a Google image-classifying captcha. Alice is viewing user-generated content posted for free, including 4chan advertisements. When Alice chooses to post, she completes a captcha for Google and her post is sent to 4chan.

Who gets paid for 4chan's content? Alice does not profit. 4chan's users do not profit. 4chan 'profits' via advertising revenue but they actually operate at a loss.

Who is left to get paid? Google. Google gets a human-completed captcha for its machine-learning projects.

I look forward to the demise of the Web and its replacement with a content-addressed alternative where your views will be technologically obsolete.

[yorwba]

Alice profits by not having her post be drowned out by a flood of automated spam. 4chan's users benefit by not having to look for interesting content among a flood of automated spam. 4chan's operators benefit by not having to moderate a flood of automated spam.

If captchas weren't useful to 4chan, they wouldn't make use of it. When you see a system that's obviously not beneficial to anyone, it's useful to take a step back and think about the incentives that keep things as they are. Because if it's so obviously wrong, why hasn't it been changed yet?

I'm not sure how a content-addressed web would handle these problems, but there'll need to be some hoops to jump through before a significant number of other people become willing to look at your content.