> ... what that means in practice is that Google is (indirectly) using
> sweatshop labour to train their machine learning systems.

Yep. No need to get their hands dirty. The economic system does the job for 
them.

> If it's wrong when
> Nike and the Gap and Apple do it, it's wrong when Google do it, even if they
> do it in a way that gives them plausible deniability.

Unfortunately, it seems that most people don't have a problem with those 
companies doing it either. Apple fans in particular seem capable of pushing any 
information to the back of their minds to keep feeling proud of their shiny 
status symbol.

>  It would be an amazing expose if a journalist could find evidence that
> Google is complicit in the operation of these sweatshops and the whole
> anti-spam thing is just a cover ...

It would, but given how many people I've spoken to are able to rationalize 
this[1] I am not optimistic that such a discovery would hurt Google.

> The only way we're going to get rid
> of captchas is happen is if someone develops a workable replacement based on
> tricking bots into revealing they are bots, as described here:
> http://ezinearticles.com/?Captchas-Considered-Harmful---Why-Captchas-Are-Bad-And-How-You-Can-Do-Better&id=1104207

Trisquel does not have a significant problem with spam, presumably due to the 
email approval process, but tricking the bot into revealing it is not human 
would certainly be more convenient. I didn't mind waiting a few hours for 
approval to join the Trisquel forum, but for people who like to post one-off 
comments on a news site or something I can see this being too inconvenient.

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