@FediThing 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? 🤔

@FediThing It can be, depending on the circumstances. I'm especially thinking of folks with social anxiety, RSD, etc. here, for whom it can already be very difficult to take the step of joining any kind of social community.

@joepie91

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

@FediThing 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 @FediThing I'd really like if we could customise the 'give a reason for joining' message.

@welshpixie @FediThing Yeah, that seems like a close-to-ideal solution to me - just making it something like "Don't worry too much about what you enter here, we just want to make sure you're not an automated signup", I expect that'll address most of the issue