Not really. You come up with a method and someone will come up with a way of factory-farming their way around it.

Even assuming this is so, what's to prevent BotCo from hiring some humans to click through the process for each bot account?

Please fill us in.

I share your skepticism.

CAPTCHAs are at best a game of cat-and-mouse, and are always open to relay attacks anyway.

You can still verify in-person, and even check documents, but no web company would even consider doing that, even for something like an optional 'fully verified account' tag.

Even something like checking a phone number just means that you're limiting the number of legitimate "bots" or alternate accounts people can have.

Indeed, that's a good way to raise the bar.

For small websites, even a completely trivial email check is enough to keep out most spammers.

Yeah, that sounds practical for every start-up that needs to do human validation.