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This is a line only few care about. Millions will blindly and gladly give their information over and happily play in the walled gardens. They see privacy focused people as old men yelling at clouds (pun intended).
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I’d like an example of a site that does this. Name and shame. It might be the choice of the developer, too.
I see…
A Reddit post and an article from a BS content farm:
https://piunikaweb.com/2026/05/07/google-recaptcha-play-services-requirement/
The support page both refer to seems to be real though? https://support.google.com/recaptcha/answer/16609652?hl=en
Does what it’s saying mean that Google Play Services is required to pass their captchas on mobile?
Edit: Found a comment in the Reddit thread from someone claiming to have seen one of these captchas in the wild, which supposedly does do this check but is easily bypassed:
Got good news, I just had this captcha. As you can see in the image there is an audio and an eye icon at the bottom. We can protest against this captcha by clicking the eye and doing the original one. As long as a substantial amount of people keep doing that I assume it wont’ go away.
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That’s all fine until you actually need the site. If it’s your bank, payment portal for your new apartment, scheduling page for your doctor, etc. Not every site is optional.
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That might be true where you live, good for you. Where I’m from, calling the doctor is still possible, but the other two examples are not an option or practically unfeasible. So many services are digital by default, some have options for communication by physical mail, but that comes with extra fees. Straight up avoiding websites if they use these new captchas introduces a disproportionate burden.
If a school’s assignment submission software has it, it’s not the same story.
My kids’ school district provides district-managed chromebooks. I stuck them on their own walled-off VLAN. Out of sight, out of mind. Any time my kids come to me with an issue on their chromebooks, I point them back to the school’s IT guy. Trying to instill the “this thing belongs to the school, therefore any issues with it are the school’s problem” mindset. I’m not rude about it, just very frank.
Get real. Nobody is enough of a masochist to do college homework on a de-googled android phone. (Sent from my Brax3)
Wow, I really am one i guess
I guess I won’t be visiting those shitty websites then. fuck off, google.
Is this just bullshit? What if the visitor has an iPhone? Or a Huawei? I don’t think a website is going to force Google on all visitors
I think iPhones already have Play Services with Chrome, but I could be wrong
iPhones have been doing this for a while. It’s enabled by default but as far as we know is privacy preserving
As far as we know, about a proprietary software?
We can see what it gives to the website
Why would a mobile site give a QR code to prove you’re human?
I think that would prove you’re robot, if anything. I need my phone’s camera to scan the QR code, but it’s on the screen!
I got a QR code like that from google drive today. I was trying to create a new account and it presented me with a QR code to scan with my phone. I didn’t try using it on my phone or wanted anything to do with it from my phone. But it wouldn’t let me continue if I didn’t scan their code
C’mon Motorola, hurry up.
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But they won’t be de-googled. I assume Google has some sort of Trojan software that remains permanently in the background that users can’t see.
Untrue. Motorola with GrapheneOS will still be degoogled. No clue where your idea comes from. Motorola is not even Google anymore.
GrapheneOS lets you install Google Play Services locked inside a sandbox inside a separate profile, which might work?
The whole system is designed around identifying you as an individual (and until now about making you as miserable as possible until you gave up), so I’m not sure how happy Google would be if you tried that.
Yes, but then you are tracked on each website and service by google. Entirely against the point of having a google free or sandboxed device.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think having a separate profile for just Captcha verification through Play would be more akin to having a separate phone for the purpose. Provided you only used that separate profile for the single purpose, then closed it
Its really going to depend on how many sites use it and how it handles tracking. If its IP address linked, then it just links all profiles on the same phone.
Gives an opportunity for more privacy-respecting websites to meet the demand.
Unfortunately I have banking apps and the such, but they work with normal browsers as well so I guess I can just do away with most Google things but it is a pain in the ass to deal with.
I’m willing to bet a million dollars that Google had this shit locked and ready for quite some time.
Thanks Americans for bringing in this administration. Lina Khan was too horrible to head FTC I guess.
Coolcoolcool this will totally not be used for quishing
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Also, how will iOS deal with this?
Google’s documentation suggests it will just work on iOS devices. Maybe you’ll need a separate app. Either way, this isn’t very reassuring, because it requires you to finance a piece of hardware that’s not really under your control (unless Graphene can actually put this crap on lockdown).
Apple already utilizes Google apps (like Chrome or Photos) to handle these things.
And mcaptcha
A screenshot to a tweet. Totally reliable source.
