I put this on my signup form and have had zero spam since, and it has very little impact on user experience. The fact that it doesn't feed the google surveillance machine is a bonus.
HCaptcha is not without problems, it is monetized by selling ML model training to 3rd parties, where the images and the labelling requests come from. Personally, I do not wish to be employed to train ML models of 3rd parties unknown to me. I have no idea about what model I'm helping train and what it is going to be used for. Transparency in this regard would go a long way towards making HCaptcha friendlier (I'm not going to talk about the ethics of free labor this time, though those too ought to be discussed.)
https://friendlycaptcha.com/
I put this on my signup form and have had zero spam since, and it has very little impact on user experience. The fact that it doesn't feed the google surveillance machine is a bonus.