> The other alternatives all suck to the extent of my knowledge, they're either prohibitively convoluted, or web3 cryptocurrency micro-transaction nonsense that

> The other alternatives all suck to the extent of my knowledge, they're either prohibitively convoluted, or web3 cryptocurrency micro-transaction nonsense that while sure it would work, also monetizes every single interaction in a way that is more dystopian than the actual skull-crushing robot apocalypse. Payment per request is the long term solution, but I completely disagree that it’s in any way dystopian. The trick is to set the fee so low that humans, who make few requests, aren’t really affected while bots, who make a large number of requests, become unprofitable. It’s exactly the same solution as email spam: at a hundredth of a USD cent per email, spam emails would no longer be profitable while regular consumers would spend 10 cents per year (assuming they send 3 emails per day).