Products · Pattern or everyday thing
CAPTCHAs
Raised as a usability problem by 467 people on Hacker News over 20 years (2007–2026), in 326 threads.
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Every issue, all time, most people first
- Something wrong here?
Captchas are so hard that users fail them repeatedlyReviewed
20072026 Image puzzles waste time with tedious tasks before proceedingUnreviewed
20072026- Image verification puzzles are so hard and annoying that users leave sites2025-07-31
- Image puzzles are so hard the user gives up after dozens of screens2025-07-31
- Puzzles are confusing, taking seconds or longer to understand what to do2025-05-15
Non-Tor users must solve captchas on every Cloudflare site visitUnreviewed
20072026- Proof-of-life anti-bot checks take seconds before content can load2026-08-14
- Anti-bot checks make the internet hard to use, and users cannot opt out2026-06-08
- Constant bot-check prompts on sites when not logged in, very annoying2026-05-02
Image challenges fail oddly and have ambiguous promptsUnreviewed
20072026- Endless loop of image-selection challenges, user gives up and leaves2025-02-05
- Images fail to load, and ambiguous tile boundaries make it unclear which squares to click2023-12-17
- Takes minutes to solve picture-matching challenges, excluding users who struggle with them2023-05-30
Simple tasks need hoops, yet bots still get throughUnreviewed
20072026- Bot checks are frustrating puzzles, like selecting mountains, rotating pieces, or adding dice2024-12-11
- Keyboard-driven mouse movement fails bot checks, so the user can never solve the challenge2024-03-25
- Makes people spend extra time proving they are not a bot, such as picking bicycles or fire hydrants2023-05-30
On-screen mobile controls make strafing hard during the captchaUnreviewed
20072026- Captcha interferes with an ad, so user cannot get past it on mobile2025-02-24
- Mobile on-screen controls make it hard to strafe while playing the captcha2025-01-02
- Captcha loads off-screen on mobile, forcing scrolling and jumping, then redirects into another captcha loop2023-08-06
Distorted letters are unreadable, forcing repeated retriesUnreviewed
20072026- Distorted letters are too hard to read, so people can't pass the test2017-10-27
- Distorted letters are nearly impossible to read, so users keep failing and retrying2016-01-18
- Has to retype hard-to-read distorted text many times before logging in2009-01-18
Image challenges like picking motorcycles are hard and inaccessibleUnreviewed
20072026- Image-based challenges like picking motorcycles are hard to pass and not truly accessible2026-04-21
- Image puzzles like picking motorcycles are tedious and make sites worse to use2024-11-18
- Challenges are confusing; users fail image tasks like selecting boats despite being human2020-11-26
Precise clicking and sliding is hard for users with poor dexterityUnreviewed
20072026- Clicking buttons with a laptop trackpad is tedious and unintuitive2019-10-22
- Precise clicking and sliding is hard for users with poor dexterity2012-12-17
- Mouse-based dexterity tests are irritating when using a TrackPoint pointing stick2012-06-25
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 50 complaints
- Site became so slow from bot attacks it was unusable, with captcha gating access2026-10-28
- Captchas are annoying to get through when browsing from datacenter IP addresses2026-10-09
- CDN checks force visitors into certain browsers, making information retrieval harder than on onion sites2026-09-28
- Legitimate humans get blocked or stuck on captchas that bots seem to pass easily2026-09-21
- Challenge gives unclear pass/fail feedback and a demo token, forcing retries after trial and error2026-09-20
- Bot checks take seconds to pass and force clicking crosswalk pictures2026-09-15
- Interstitial verification page appears constantly, interrupting access to sites2026-09-08
- Can't get past the captcha challenge2026-09-05
- Gets trapped in endless captcha loops that block access to sites2026-08-28
- The dash in the test is very confusing to the person taking it2026-08-15
- Proof-of-life anti-bot checks take seconds before content can load2026-08-14
- Anti-scraping checks make ordinary web browsing slower and more tedious2026-08-11
- Forced browser check waits and reloads before reaching the page2026-08-11
- Repeated CAPTCHA challenges make the user give up searching and close the window2026-08-06
- Slow refreshing image tiles make captchas tedious to complete2026-07-11
- CAPTCHA challenges required just to browse a site make people leave2026-06-24
- Captcha is unpassable for regular people, blocked a purchase2026-06-18
- Readers must pass a CAPTCHA and wait 10 seconds before reading2026-06-18
- Anti-bot checks make the internet hard to use, and users cannot opt out2026-06-08
- Tricks visitors into pasting PowerShell code into a terminal2026-06-05
- Audio CAPTCHA is painful to hear and hard to understand, making it hard for blind users2026-05-29
- Captchas interrupt legitimate payments and donations, so the user abandons the transaction2026-05-29
- Verification box reappears on every page, even on the same site minutes later2026-05-21
- Gets stuck in a CAPTCHA loop and must use incognito to get through2026-05-20
- Check is slow and repeatedly reappears while browsing the same site2026-05-06
- Constant bot-check prompts on sites when not logged in, very annoying2026-05-02
- Image-based challenges like picking motorcycles are hard to pass and not truly accessible2026-04-21
- Fails on first try and then loops endlessly, so the user never reaches the site2026-04-02
- Had to solve 15 consecutive captchas just to submit an order2026-03-29
- Captcha is annoying to get through2026-02-12
- Must hold a button for about 20 seconds with nothing else to do2026-01-19
- Cannot get past the captcha on Firefox, forcing a switch to Chrome2025-12-27
- Captcha reappears after clicking, reloading the page repeatedly without letting the user through2025-12-27
- Clicking the checkbox reloads and presents the captcha again, blocking access2025-12-25
- Userscripts interfere with captcha, forcing users to disable their extensions2025-11-14
- Shows an 'browser out of date' message to users with current browsers using privacy extensions2025-10-29
- Verification checkbox spins forever, unchecks itself, or denies access outright on some browsers2025-10-04
- CAPTCHA is often broken and gets stuck in a loop2025-09-26
- Text challenge fails because letter case must match exactly2025-09-23
- Has to click Cloudflare checkboxes and Google image challenges many times daily2025-09-02
- Repeated captchas and a block for suspicious activity, with no clear way through2025-08-25
- Can't read or reproduce the characters on a foreign site's CAPTCHA2025-08-21
- Gets bot-check challenge every time, full CAPTCHA on VPN or other browsers2025-08-21
- Captcha or bot check appears on every visit, adding clicks before content loads2025-08-21
- Constant CAPTCHAs on every page, increasingly difficult puzzles, and US English prompts for a UK user2025-07-31
- Image puzzles are so hard the user gives up after dozens of screens2025-07-31
- Puzzle CAPTCHAs take up to ten rounds and the user can't tell why they fail2025-07-31
- Image verification puzzles are so hard and annoying that users leave sites2025-07-31
- Gets stuck in an infinite CAPTCHA loop when using Firefox with blockers2025-07-31
- RSS feeds meant for programmatic consumption are blocked from automated access by default settings2025-07-18