Why the scare quotes? Because the purpose of recaptcha isn't to tell humans from bots, it's to punish users who do not wish to be tracked by giving them an endless stream of challenges to solve no matter if they keep getting them right or wrong. It is especially obvious when they intentionally delay the loading of subsequent images if you have too many privacy features enabled, because it does nothing to prevent bots from solving them. It's grouped into several tiers, depending on the amount of frustration they want to generate:

1. Invisible captcha - you have Chrome, you're logged into a Google account, your advertising ID has a profile full of useful data. You go in with no hassle.

2. 1 click - maybe you're on a new IP or a new device, but you're logged into a Google account and use Chrome. Click the checkbox and that's it.

3. Regular captcha - You're not logged in but you don't use any privacy enhancements, so through a combination of fingerprinting, cookies, and other tracking techniques you're uniquely identified anyway. You get 9 images, select 2 or 3 of them and you're good to go.

4. Annoying captcha - you're blocking third party cookies, you're not on Chrome, looks like you're not being a good cog in the machine. You get a captcha with 9 squares that load more images, or you have to "select squares containing X", and you get 2-5 of these in a row.

5. Infuriating captcha - you're blocking third party trackers, cookies, all other storage methods, you block or mitigate canvas fingerprinting, you're behind a VPN, your fingerprint is not recognized, there's no data in your profile. Google won't squeeze a cent out of you, so you don't get to use the internet. You're getting an endless stream of slowly loading squares, or 5-7 objects to recognize. Even if you do all of them correctly, it won't let you in. Maybe after 4-8 cycles, but that will still waste ~10 minutes per try. You're barred from any website that links to reCaptcha.

These days websites using it are for all purposes dead to me. I can't visit them and I won't waste my time clicking their images or selecting squares or whatever.

It's created by emacs users, for emacs users, it should absolutely mention that word everywhere and stress its origins, it's already widely adopted and who really cares if somebody who is so superficial that he rejects a superior solution because it originated in a text editor he doesn't like doesn't use it?

I half expected to see my music player on the list, given it's popular, GPLv3 licensed and has no tracking, but I have no idea what the approval process is.

At least I don't live in the Chinese jurisdiction, while the tech giants do whatever they can to slip their tentacles into every website you visit, even if you don't do any business with them and actively fight their spyware. The Chinese government doesn't want to sell me anything either.