Why Hacker News doesn't need CAPTCHA

3 points by modzu 5y ago ↗ HN

(because, sssh, nobody does)

The independence from captcha is a significant win for HN and an open Internet.

But seriously, how do you do it? It would be great for other sites to take note.

3 comments

[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 20.6 ms ] thread

The title should be prefixed with "Ask HN: "

The reason HN does not need a captcha is that it has 2 full time moderators that watch this site continuously. They do an incredible job at weeding out abusive content. There is some automation that also helps them flag the obvious abuse and people can also flag submissions to help that system. If you enable "show dead" in your profile, you will see some of the content that gets removed.

dang 5y ago ↗

I just noticed this and would have replied sooner if I'd seen it. We do use captchas sometimes for logins, especially when HN is under some sort of attack, which happens periodically. But we try to minimize it.

I'm told that hCaptcha would be better than you-know-who but haven't had the cycles to look into it yet.

eatbots 5y ago ↗

We'd be happy to help, just drop us a line.

The enterprise version is probably what you want: includes a "99.9% passive" mode where most people will never see a challenge unless they look like an attacker, meaning you can leave it on all the time rather than having to firefight.

(work for hCaptcha)