A lot of captchas are out there because their business model requires wasting human time - they call it "engagement". Captchas are there to ensure human time is

A lot of captchas are out there because their business model requires wasting human time - they call it "engagement". Captchas are there to ensure human time is wasted and can't be worked around by automated means. > often on sites that should want to be publishing their data far and wide (like ecommerce) Mismatched incentives within the companies mean this may not actually be the case. A situation where customers come in and buy on their own (because they've heard from elsewhere how good/cheap the products are) sounds great for business (and is great) but that's absolute doom for the marketing department for example because not only it's clear they're not actually needed, but they get little of that "engagement" they so desperately need to justify their careers/promotions if people just come in, buy and leave. With such a situation, the marketing/product department would rather have someone that buys very little but "engages" a lot than the other way around, as said engagement can be (mis?)represented in various ways to benefit their own careers, where as raw sales profit doesn't go into their pockets. Thus, captchas are one possible way to ensure this "engagement" is up, even if it overall leads to lower sales.