CAPTCHAs have evolved to reflect the untenable distinction between real and fake users

A smiling woman unloads a dishwasher. The image, now embedded in a tweet, has been sourced from a collection of stock photos including other smiling women stationed at the same dishwasher. Partitioned into a neat, four-by-four grid, the image is topped with a familiar blue header and an apparently innocuous directive: “Select all squares containing a dishwasher.” Eight have been selected, as indicated by a familiar blue checkmark, but they contain the smiling woman, not the appliance. Is this a sophisticated critique of technology’s role in the gendered division of labor, or is it merely the handiwork of a misogynistic troll? Read More