[InternetOfStuff]

> False comparison. Google users are voluntary.

Not entirely. I can choose not to use Gmail or similar services.

I can opt out of Google ads+tracking only because I'm technically adept enough. I can't (realistically) opt out of reCaptcha.

[chii]

You can opt out of recaptcha by just boycotting the website which uses it.

But of course by "opt out" you mean to remain a user of a service but not the parts you don't like. Whether you are entitled to do this or not is still up for debate.

[InternetOfStuff]

> You can opt out of recaptcha by just boycotting the website which uses it.

Ah, I was waiting for somebody to make this argument, which I find somewhat disingenuous given how widespread reCaptcha's use is.

With sites I don't care about leaving them is exactly what I do - but there are sites I pay a lot of money to use, and can't really avoid using for business reasons, yet they still subject me to reCaptcha.

The path I've taken instead is to address this with the site owners. Most weren't really aware of how overreaching reCaptcha feels to some, and I've had good discussions. Of course nobody changed their site based on my complaint, but I like to think I raised awareness.

> But of course by "opt out" you mean to remain a user of a service but not the parts you don't like.

Specifically, a part of user verification. I'm still not sure why they feel they need to verify my humanity - they've got my credit card details and everything.

> Whether you are entitled to do this or not is still up for debate.

Let me ask the opposite question: is the owner of a website entitled to sell my privacy for their own (debatable) convenience?

Tbh reCaptcha irks me more than ads.

[TomMarius]

>Let me ask the opposite question: is the owner of a website entitled to sell my privacy for their own (debatable) convenience?

Well yeah, they are, you're accepting that by using the recaptcha widget. Don't use it and then nobody will sell your data.

[atq2119]

This is totally disingenuous, especially in a thread comparing to Tesla.

With Tesla, I'm directly buying their product or not, and they do have competitors that I could choose from (not particularly great ones yet, I'll admit, but they do exist today and they're going to get there eventually).

With Google's ad tech and captcha, my data is being siphoned off to them by third parties. I'm looking at totally unrelated service X, and suddenly I'm faced with Google. The burden of boycott becomes much higher than in the Tesla case, which makes it reasonable to state that opt-out is "not [practically] possible".

The situations would be comparable if upon encountering a Google captcha I could choose to solve somebody else's captcha to access the same service.

[chii]

> my data is being siphoned off to them by third parties.

they are not "third-party". If a site uses google's products (like analytics or recaptcha), then you could reasonably consider them partner sites to google.

Indeed, google is difficult to boycott - no one is diputing it. However, google obviously isn't very offensive to a large number of people, because there are very dedicated groups who dedicate time and energy into boycotting companies like nestle (which is _very_ difficult to boycott). May be a lot of laymen just don't think that their data is worth protecting (whether they are right or not remains to be seen).