Ask HN: Is it time for HN to implement a form of captcha? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Is it time for HN to implement a form of captcha?

#11

Post by ada0000 » Thu, Jan 08, 2026, 7:33 PM UTC

rd wrote: post #5

I've always wished there was a "block comments from this user" feature that didn't rely on vibe-coding my own Chrome extension (and thus not work on Safari where I spent at least 50% of my HN time). I imagine it could even work like Sponsorblock does, and we could crowdsource people who's comments are inflammatory. I've also noticed that very obviously LLM-generated comments are called out, and the community tends to…

+1. even blocking keywords could be nice, e.g. i don’t use AI for coding and don’t care much for news about claude code.

captcha would make it more of a hassle to post comments.

Re: Ask HN: Is it time for HN to implement a form of captcha?

#12

Post by dizhn » Thu, Jan 08, 2026, 7:34 PM UTC

losvedir wrote: post #3

I've been thinking the same. I'm actually building a little site that presents a textarea that you can type your comment into and it will track its changes over time (typing, editing, pasting, etc) and provide a little playback widget so someone can see the composition of the comment. The idea being you can include a link to the playback in your comment that you post here and someone can eyeball it and see if it look…

A generic playwright script taking agent's output as input could do this easily. Especially if it's just a few sites.

Re: Ask HN: Is it time for HN to implement a form of captcha?

#13

Post by pamcake » Thu, Jan 08, 2026, 7:34 PM UTC

HN already enforces ReCAPTCHA for registrations. More CAPTCHAs will not do much if anything to improve.

Re: Ask HN: Is it time for HN to implement a form of captcha?

#14

Post by 1970-01-01 » Thu, Jan 08, 2026, 7:35 PM UTC

Posts like this should just implement the poll feature. You'll have your answer in 24h. Then go and quibble with your data.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll

Re: Ask HN: Is it time for HN to implement a form of captcha?

#15

Post by lynndotpy » Thu, Jan 08, 2026, 7:35 PM UTC

[flagged]

Re: Ask HN: Is it time for HN to implement a form of captcha?

#16

Post by iammjm » Thu, Jan 08, 2026, 7:35 PM UTC

> "there is a tremendous amount of attempts by bots, and specifically AI agents, to inject slop into HN threads"

Do you have some examples of this? I am on HN almost every day, and I read a lot of comments, and I haven't noticed this

Re: Ask HN: Is it time for HN to implement a form of captcha?

#17

Post by orsorna » Thu, Jan 08, 2026, 7:35 PM UTC

pepperball wrote: post #6

[flagged]

Your inflammatory accusation aside, is there even any indication that OP worked to push such efforts? Believe it or not, I think most HN users are not directly contributing to writing tools that "enshittify" the internet and are collecting a wage writing other kinds of software.

Re: Ask HN: Is it time for HN to implement a form of captcha?

#18

Post by bdcravens » Thu, Jan 08, 2026, 7:36 PM UTC

rfw300 wrote: post #4

chaps wrote: post #2

This wouldn't solve anything. To see what I mean, take a screenshot of a random captcha that needs solving and ask an LLM to solve it for you. It will do it accurately.

"Captcha" doesn't refer to any specific type of puzzle, but a class of methods for verifying human users. Some older-style captchas are broken, but some newer ones are not.

Since before LLMs were even an issue, there have been services that use overseas workers to solve them, with the going rate about $0.002 per captcha. (and they solve several different types)

Re: Ask HN: Is it time for HN to implement a form of captcha?

#19

Post by khannn » Thu, Jan 08, 2026, 7:37 PM UTC

NO

"Me furiously trying to decide what a EURO thinks a motorcycle is" for 60s

Re: Ask HN: Is it time for HN to implement a form of captcha?

#20

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jan 08, 2026, 7:37 PM UTC

rd wrote: post #7

losvedir wrote: post #3

I've been thinking the same. I'm actually building a little site that presents a textarea that you can type your comment into and it will track its changes over time (typing, editing, pasting, etc) and provide a little playback widget so someone can see the composition of the comment. The idea being you can include a link to the playback in your comment that you post here and someone can eyeball it and see if it look…

I don't know why more school districts don't force this for essays. It's so straightforward with Google doc editing history too. And yeah, sure, you can get around it if you _really_ want quite trivially, but I imagine it would solve for 99% of students, and force them to actually engage with whatever AI-generated stuff they inevitably type by hand more than they were before.

[deleted]