Can't speak specifically for this site, but these days many prove-you're-human tests have been added because of overzealous AI scraping eating server resources unnecessarily and to an unreasonable and excessive degree.

Because AI scraping is everywhere and flooding sites with useless traffic. It’s not ideal, but it’s the best people can do atm

"It's not ideal" is an understatement, I have to do stupid captchas for about half my Google searches.

What kind of blog gets flooded by what, 10/100 req/s at max? Seems somewhere along the line we forgot how to deploy and run infrastructure on the internet, if some basic scrapers manage to down your website.

I have a disconnect here too, which makes it feel like I'm missing something. I'm hit so often with very onerous captcha-like demands or just blocked entirely when trying to make a single page or login request. I understand restrictions for rate limiting and things, but at this rate it feels like it's only a matter of time before the whole web is behind voluntary ID-scan requests for "security" even if laws never come to pass.

Because of enshitification of the internet you now need to solve puzzles before you can access websites. Welcome to 2026.