Browser Support • Re: Ya I dont own a cellphone and even if I did....NO

This kind of thing is exactly what I've been prepping for even since before I was a Pale Moon user. I went down the rabbit hole of finding out that Google owns reCAPTCHA after I blocked all Google servers at the IP level, ran that way for about a year. A ton of sites couldn't verify I was human without pretty much letting Google invade my privacy and vouch for me.

This QR code thing is just them making the rule explicit, tying it further into Google's approved technology stack, and doing what I always figured they would do with it once I found out they were in control of human verification.

To be honest, this is annoying to me for multiple reasons. Putting aside how much I dislike Google, even if I was fine with them, I hate encountering QR codes in real life because my phone doesn't have a front-facing camera, it's not designed for social media and taking pictures. I've already been in situations in real life where I couldn't participate in a poll or survey, or attend an event because I couldn't make a QR code work for me (sometimes I can after struggling with it for 15 minutes or in some instances even pulling out my laptop to scan it because that has a better quality camera). It's to the point I get angry every time I see a QR code because it means I'm expected to deal with my phone (which I don't like doing and apparently according to people who know me I seem visibly tense/angry when I have to pull it out), and worse deal with it in a way that assumes I have a good quality front-facing camera which wasn't a priority for me when I picked mine out, as I'm not big on social media and don't do the stupid trick of snapping a picture of the whiteboard with my smartphone while a teacher is teaching rather than taking traditional notes.

I had one teacher get mad that I couldn't just snap a quick photo of the board and wanted to take notes by hand. When she saw my phone, she just told me I had to have a classmate e-mail me the notes, as if I had come to class unprepared or something and she was pissed she had to accommodate me not having a good quality smartphone camera. She pretty much only grudgingly accommodated me with that solution after I pointed out that she didn't mention in the syllabus that we have to use a smartphone, let alone one with a good quality front-facing camera. I mean, seriously... don't they know sometimes people's phone cameras get damaged or fail even if the phone does have one and sometimes they don't go out and buy a new one right away because of that?