I want to give surveys to a large sample size of users while filtering out bots and without compromising the privacy of the actual survey respondents. I figure a lot of the people whose voices need to be heard will have legitimate fears of being hunted down.

Traditional captcha is easy for AI to crack, but reverse captcha should hypothetically be more difficult.

My intention is to randomly generate a set of alphanumeric characters with each instance of the survey, and request the user to draw the characters as best as they can. The resulting answer to the “captcha” would be saved with the rest of the form data, alongside the randomly generated characters for that instance of the form. The idea is to exclude blank and nonsensical responses, as a quick-and-dirty bot filter.

My current plan is to create the surveys using Google Forms (with sign-in not being required and user email not being collected) and create an embed/plugin that allows the user to draw, ideally formatted for a mobile device. I would collect the drawings with the rest of the form responses, but nothing else. I do have concerns about storage.

If you have a better suggestion of how to go about this, I welcome comments. I do also have my own domain but I haven’t used it for anything yet. I struggle with executive dysfunction pretty badly.

If you’d prefer to chat with me about this on Discord, just let me know and I’ll DM you my Discord username.