Regarding the hidden form input, make sure you aren't blocking screen reader users/the visually disabled accidently. Make sure you can't end up in that input with the tab key.

I've found that comments submitted in less than 7 seconds from page load are spam. On a few low traffic sites I just discard anything faster than that.

A few bots seem to load a page, wait a while, then come back to it. But by and large they seem to try to submit the comment immediately after page load.

Mind you, this was on low-traffic sites. High traffic sites I'm sure see more varied techniques.

`aria-hidden` and `display: none` should effectively hide it from screen readers and you shouldn’t hit it with tab.

Do you need both, or is `display: none` enough?

display: none should be enough.

If you notice issues while testing, aria-hidden is a good thing to have in your back pocket

I like this. I'll add something like this to the backlog.

This is trivial for most bots to bypass nowadays with headless browsers and such.

yup. This really works for dumb bots.