Spam got us here. In the fear that we would see one spam message, we gave up all our liberties to Google et al, so they can choose how they want to mediate our

Spam got us here. In the fear that we would see one spam message, we gave up all our liberties to Google et al, so they can choose how they want to mediate our online interactions. To people thinking this is blowing spam fear out of protections, go ahead and post on reddit, craigslist, or even 4chan(!) without giving your connection and browser information to google via captcha. On craigslist you can't even consume the content without answering captchas. Today you can't participate in any online forum without giving up your phone number indirectly via a google or facebook account. This creates an environment where only the insane will jump in at every opportunity, while the moderates will just ignore the discussion and not be heard. Glad we have our hacker-news privilege and the masses still haven't found us out to make it an attractive target for spammers, and consequently, to captcha censorship.