@tillshadeisgone @welshpixie I had my instance on open registration until last year (closed because I couldn't guarantee reliability until after I moved to someplace safer)... and honestly it's a hard balancing act.

Those with open registration are the fediverse evangelists trying to grow the network and usually with the awareness that any friction in registration will drastically reduce adoption... But then you get situations like this which are an extremely valid reason against...

Given that the open registration problem won't practically go away outside of whitelist only networks (which are inherently very small)... we really need better tools to manage these instances from the outside (since we can't control the inside)

I'm genuinely curious what ideas people have that could help?

I've been mulling over the idea of figuring out a system for collaborating on blocklists so moderators or users who trust eachother can expand their response time and power to quickly shut down these problem users. (Yes, I'm aware that blocklists also get used to compile lists of people for various reasons, but that's just assholes using a random tool that's not even good at that job)

This makes me think that maybe we need settings on the various platforms to do things like hide users under a certain age. Or maybe blocklists of problem email addresses so they can be blocked from registration without also having to set up a new email account?