@shampoobottle There's a lot to unpack here. First, anyone with devops experience will tell you Mastodon is one of the easiest to scale pieces of software. It's a question of how far you *want* to scale. And here comes the dichotomy of the problem: I don't *want* to scale infinitely, but closing registrations has historically put a stop to whole movements because every UX delay weeds out the large bulk of people who are just barely interested enough.

And this is why I said what I said.