Ads in the Captcha?

[mrjake]

In the middle of dealing with a hd failure, and all the frustration that that entails, I discover you're using a Captcha system that requires me to look at ads?!?!

What is wrong with you people?

[Brian]

Hi, mrjake.

You don't have to interact with the ad itself to complete the captcha. Clicking on the continue button below it should allow you to proceed with your current action.

[mrjake]

Jul 9, 2018 12:30:25 GMT -8 Brian said:

You don't have to interact with the ad itself to complete the captcha. Clicking on the continue button below it should allow you to proceed with your current action.

I don't object to the use of ads, I object to it's tone deaf placement.


It's obnoxious, it's annoying, and you should be ashamed of yourselves for subjecting people to it. You should be doubly ashamed for subjecting people to it at the worst possible time, when they're trying to recover a lost password.

How do you not get that?

[Derek‽]

I’m sure everyone at PB—employees and Support members alike—can sympathize and empathize with you regarding your HDD failure. We’ve probably all been there and we know it absolutely sucks. There are a metric crap-ton of headaches. Worse, people online (like me) tell you they know how you feel, but you’re so irritated and frustrated that you don’t want anyone to tell you these things, you just kind of want to be pissed about it, because it’s currently your problem, not anyone else’s.

And there’s the rub: it’s really not someone else’s problem, and it’s not their fault. It’s immensely cathartic to rage at someone else over something, anything, because assigning blame gives you the feeling of possible justice on the horizon. How dare ProBoards use a CAPTCHA system with ads when I’m feeling frustrated?!

But a forgotten forum password is a minor annoyance, not a massive tragedy. Being subjected to an ad’s presence while trying to recover that password, and the possible short delay while it loads, isn’t a crime against humanity. It is a bit obnoxious, you’re right, but it’s something everyone should be well accustomed to by 2018. Frankly, I ignore the ads, which wasn’t possible a few years ago when the provider required sitting through part of a video or clicking on the ad first in order to reveal the input phrase.

It should also be noted that while the ads do generate revenue for the website operator (in this case, PB), they also generate revenue for the third-party CAPTCHA provider. It needs to make money so that it can provide its own service to PB. The point of using a third-party provider is to protect against the kind of abuse the CAPTCHA is intended to protect against in the first place.