
Fuck reCaptcha (2018) - jraph
https://github.com/google/recaptcha/issues/286
======
amanzi
As an end-user reCaptcha causes me so much frustration. It is often blocked by
either Firefox or Privacy Badger, and I usually only realise it's blocked
after I've filled out a long form and tried to submit it. Then I need to
unblock it and reload the page which often will either reset the form or lose
the state of the page. And then, I'm almost always presented with the crazy
"select storefronts" choices.

I think the language in the issue is warranted in this case...

------
system2
Terrible language to criticize or submit a bug of a product.

I agree the recaptcha can be frustrating, but the user must also understand
the underlying reasons. For instance, your ISP and VPN plays a huge role why
you keep getting it.

As an ecommerce developer I appreciate recaptcha. And we should also
appreciate it is free. If hate it too much, why use it?

~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
> As an ecommerce developer I appreciate recaptcha. And we should also
> appreciate it is free.

It's not free, it's a part of Google's worldwide data collection machine.

Actually, for medium to small websites recaptcha is not even necessary, a
simple question, even stupid ("who is the author of the famous book by
Hemingway?") is far more useful because it doesn't lose the user's time. You
know, if they get annoyed, they might not place the order.

~~~
jrnichols
Is there a good list of reCaptcha alternatives? I'm also among those that
doesn't want to help Google train any of its AI.

And I'm also sick of clicking on cars and storefronts. :)

~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
It depends. If you have a service that is likely to be targeted by
_specialized_ bots because you provide something valuable that they can abuse
(like storage, e-mail sending capability etc.), and you don't care that much
about your users, reCaptcha is currently one of these solutions that mostly
work.

For everything else, you can easily use your _own_ solution and it's likely to
work like a charm. You can even include it in JS on the client as it doesn't
matter if it's obvious for a human. Some simple oneliners will do, even if you
work with a stock solution like Prestashop or Wordpress.

In my experience, e-commerce spam is mostly fake customer-service requests and
sometimes orders made by some typical bots with links to Russian and Chinese
websites. It's enough to do one simple check an they're gone as the people who
run these bots don't care about your website in particular, they just want to
spam the whole internet and they won't bother modifying the code just for one
website. They won't even know the bots were stopped by your oneliner.

------
JohnTHaller
Without reCaptcha or similar, I'd have to close my public forum with 233k
members as it would be overrun with spam.

~~~
crtasm
Self hosted and only required when you are about to post something would be
preferable to a lot of people.

