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News@lemmy.worldEnglish · 15 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

www.pcgamer.com

698

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

www.pcgamer.com

mox@lemmy.sdf.org to

News@lemmy.worldEnglish · 15 days ago

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

www.pcgamer.com

Is that good?

Not just tracking cookies, but browser fingerprinting.

Not just Google, but now Cloudflare.

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ThoranTW@lemmy.world
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14 days ago
OP misquoted the article. It’s 819m hours, not 819b. A rough estimate of the average number of internet users was 3.6b over that period.

819m / 3.6b / 13 / 365 * 3600 = .1726 (rounded to .175 for a cleaner number)

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