Fuck reCaptcha (2018)
github.com
github.com
I think the language in the issue is warranted in this case...
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?
I kind of hate hackernews for this neverending google data collection circlejerk.
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.
And I'm also sick of clicking on cars and storefronts. :)
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.