It’s incredibly sad how the open web is being destroyed by google’s recaptcha.

Without google's recaptcha, do you think there would be less spam?

Personally, I suspect there would be more without at least some speed bumps to raise the cost of spamming. I would absolutely love for there to be better options than recaptcha that meets the same needs around bot-detection, price, implementation effort, and accessibility. It is, sadly, the best option I've seen on offer.

You're right. The scenario we're in is incredibly sad. It would be wonderful if the individual actors involved had better options to meet their needs.

I'd argue that it's equally sad to see the open web get destroyed by massive DDoS attacks and malicious actors. How would you keep your own website up if it was constantly being attacked?

You're barking up the wrong tree. Bad actors create abuse and spam which they can do because of fundamental weaknesses in the design of the internet. People trying to solve that reality with Recaptcha (and Cloudflare for that matter) aren't the ones destroying the internet.

I don't think it's so much the wrong tree as it is but one tree in a forest to be barking up.

All the maturely developed bot filters frequently throw me in an endless battery of tests that have me giving up in frustration before finally making it through to content I'm requesting.

> aren't the ones destroying the internet

IMO they are every bit as much destroying it as the abusers they're claiming to fend off.

I'm totally in that camp of opinion, although I'll acknowledge the escalating abuses carried out by both "sides."

In the meantime, i hope to have the savviness to program my own way out of unsolvable captchas.

Already exists: https://github.com/dessant/buster

Edit: on re-read, you meant solving using humans. Buster uses speech-to-text APIs to solve.

Every lead to spice(e:solve, lol gboard) my problems is probably worth a peek. I'll take a look, thank you.