@FediTips
might also be interesting to understand if with this procedure spammers generally dont even send the request for an acvount or if admins really read the why answer and decide by that if they let people join.

the latter could actually add a lot of friction for "good" users as they would be afraid to get a no just because some random problem with the reason they give

@sodiboo

@FediTips

that's likely not because of the missing "why..." question but because of the manual aporoval in general.

thats two different things.

or can you explain how a human will see the difference between me or a bot writing "because i like your instance" into that field?

would be interesting to understand what rules people doing these manual approvals go by... well, sadly publishing them allows malicious people to circumvent them

@FediTips
seriously i can't imagine how "why do you want to join" will stop spammers... as already said lying is easy. And also a plausibility check is hard.

How to check if it's true when i say "i want to be on social media and this instance seemed best for me"?

@tristan