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May I suggest an alternative: paying a small fee to avoid/replace captchas (say $1-10, or higher than the captcha farms pay...)

Also it seems like HN is using the older recaptcha (without numeric signs), I didn't know you could choose your recaptcha "version" though.

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You may if you feel like paying every person on earth $500 a month to cover their captcha fees. Unless your goal happens to be excluding most of the world from Internet services and random web forums.

I don't know where you got that number from, that's extreme. This is a one-time fee we're talking about here. Also why should I pay anybody? Strange reply.

I think it was a strange way of saying that $1-10 may not be cost-prohibitive to financially-comfortable residents of 1st world countries, but could certainly be cost-prohibitive to users with less financial resources or from 3rd world countries. Such a fee could be a serious deterrent on a free and open internet with diverse participants.

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