@Chris @homegrown and it's not like approving signups is unusual. Twitter does it too, it's just less obvious, because the background check happens automatically under the hood (has this email been used before? is that email provider prone to spam?). But I can't count how often I've made a new account for some project or other and it was suspended within minutes and only reinstated after I provided a phone number.

On Mastodon instances (idk about other software), it's just more transparent: it says "request account" or something, and since a human does it, it takes longer than the few seconds it does on commercial platforms.

It's the same process as everywhere else, just with less room for software error.