I know that some captchas aren't accessible, but there ARE accessible captchas too.

But I'm not sure what accessibility difference it makes between 'someone fills in all the fields and clicks a button and gets instantly approved' to 'someone fills in all the fields and clicks a button then gets an email when they're approved' - you have to have an email account to register in the first place

It does create more friction in signing up, especially for people who have no existing connections in or familiarity with the fedi culture, because it's often not clear what to expect from an approval process (do you need to have a good reason? is it just a spot check? etc.) and it can feel like a job application or something fragile, as if you could get thrown out at any moment.

I don't think these are necessarily good reasons to not have an approval process, and I think a lot of improvements are possible there to mitigate these issues (including eg. invite systems), but this does seem to be something a fair amount of people run into (undoubtedly due to cultural expectations built up by big tech platforms).

@joepie91

"It does create more friction in signing up"

Is that an accessibility issue though? 🤔

@joepie91

What if it was just the approval step, without asking for a sign-up reason?

I think that would mostly resolve the problem for users, though I suspect that this would be difficult for instance moderators to deal with, due to the lack of data on which to make a decision; at least in my personal experience even a short message helps a lot in determining legitimacy.

It could still work as a way to *delay* spammers, but I'd be hesitant to recommend it as The Solution(tm), so to say.

@joepie91

It's a tough one... Looks like we have to go with the lesser evil rather than looking for a perfect solution.