Time to switch from recaptcha?

[vbgamer45]

Time to switch to another captcha for 2.1 or future versions of SMF. Some options: hcaptcha or cloudflare turnsile possible options

The implementation of the pricing changes we announced in January 2024 is now complete.

We're writing to remind you that these changes will apply to your Google reCAPTCHA project starting August 1, 2024.
What do you need to know?

The following price changes will be available with Google reCAPTCHA:

    All customers will receive a no-cost allowance of 10,000 instead of 1 million assessments per month.
    Customers in our reCAPTCHA Standard tier, with usage of 10,000 - 100,000 assessments per month, will be charged a flat $8 fee.
    Customers in our reCAPTCHA Enterprise tier, with usage above 100,000 assessments per month, will be charged an additional $1 per 1,000 assessments.

[Arantor]

Ew. Yes, time to look at hCaptcha first I think.

[vbgamer45]

Yeah I like hCaptcha the best in terms of puzzles.  I think all these services need to implement better block blocking of (AI bots, search engines, spam in general)  too much quotas are used up by bots and they expect people to pay now.
Last month had 7,012,000 requests when generally under 2 million. I believe it is mostly from the AI bots which are blocked now.

[Arantor]

CloudFlare in front of a site has a straight up block option for AI bots, so they don't get your content and don't even get to CAPTCHAs.

I personally find the AI bot view of "if it's on the web, it's fair game" pretty reprehensible because that's not how the social contract ever worked, and copyright is a thing.

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

Interesting, Google seems to have forgotten that it was always a trade - We allow Google to spy on our users and help develop Google's AI through user interaction, and in turn Google helps us separate bots from actual people.

EDIT: Also funny enough, it's cheaper to break than it is to use https://www.hcaptcha.com/report-how-much-is-a-recaptcha-really-worth

[Arantor]

Google seems to have forgotten that it was always a trade

When Carnegie Mellon first invented ReCAPTCHA, it had an even more noble goal for digitising old books.

[Jeff Lewis]

I had no idea the price was going up, I'll have to check into this as all the work captchas we use are on my personal account