#31 - Google’s reCAPTCHA Changes and The Trend Toward User Liability Online

In this episode, I’m talking through the email many of us received from Google about changes to reCAPTCHA, and why it set off alarm bells for me. I reflect on how responsibility and legal liability are increasingly being pushed onto individual users, even when we don’t have real control or understanding of how these systems work. I connect this to my wider decision to gradually remove Google and Meta from my digital life, and to similar issues I’ve seen with Spotify, music distribution, and AI tools. This is a fast, slightly ranty episode, but one that gets to the root of why the internet is starting to feel hostile, confusing, and unsafe for ordinary people who just want to exist online in a responsible way.If you enjoyed this podcast please share it with a friend or consider leaving a review, it really helps me out. You can also support me by becoming a paid member on this channel to unlock exclusive episodes for €5 per month on Substack and Patreon. And lastly, if you want to engage with the visual side of my work you can follow me @laurasheeran_ie on YouTube and Instagram where I post often. That’s all for now. Thanks for being here, and remember: Put humans first. Don’t feed the machine. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit laurasheeran.substack.com/subscribe