What happens when you don't vet sign-ups is that mods on other instances who value the safety of their users have to pick up your slack.
The extensive work illustrated in the linked post (from @Curator) is also taking place to varying degrees on every other instance which still federates with mastodon.social and the other open-sign-up ones.
This is like house-sharing with someone who repeatedly leaves the front door unlocked.
Yes of course there are much horribler instances, but those tend to be blocked wholesale in my part of Fedi. Among the instances we do federate with, the spam & scam accounts I see are nearly always on m.s.
If mastodon.social mods (who apparently are paid!) were to make people introduce themselves before approving new accounts, then a lot of this spam wouldn't be getting in the door. Quash once at source, save multiple other people from having to repeat the same work.
I appreciate that they're trying to make it easy for newcomers to join, but at what cost? And is an intro message really beyond the typical non-techie person? I think there are some considerably higher barriers to adoption than that. Not convinced it's a good tradeoff.
I don't actually want this instance to defederate from m.s, because lots of the people I follow are on there. But I can really see why people sometimes do.
https://mastodon.art/@Curator/115113625708757872
#FediMeta #moderation#OpenSignups