I was banned from the hCaptcha accessibility account for not being blind (2023)

Why are captchas even a thing still? If folks want to scrape something or build an automation around something, then why not let them do it? They still have to respect the system they're logging in. Not to mention the privacy perk of not exposing your visitors to some captcha service with a dozen or more data subprocessors.

> Why are captchas even a thing still?

Because it works, to some degree. It keeps away the annoying cheap bots and stupid kids. Smarter or more dedicated actors can still circumvent it, but even they are least slowed down to some degree.

But thinking about, maybe just putting a 20 second pause after which you have to push a button might be already good enough for all this. And every stupid bot avoiding it will get banned.

Indeed… and if it's really problematic, a client-side script can run some expensive calculations as well (the same way captchas do it), to make it extra uninteresting to target unless someone is really motivated and has the budget for it.