@toddalstrom all of this has been figured out by the forums 10+ years ago. The spam is just getting more sophisticated and larger in volume, but the old solutions still work because they introduce a second DIFFERENT element to the spam equation a human.
You can beat tech with more tech (e.g. CAPTCHA vs CAPTCHA) but you need to leverage social engineering against a human. Not infallible by any means, but a huge sharp turn away from what beats tech.