@Floppy @Mastodon I think the sign ups have to be open, I know there was a question about it, which from a legitimate users experience is the best way because waiting an unknown amount of time for an approval is a rubbish experience.

I'd really like some middle ground where we can run some automated checks and safeguards and only then hold accounts flagged as potentially spammy but there's only so far you can currently automate that with the state of the tools today.

I'm going to head back to the Mastodon stand a bit later (as the area was super busy) as I think @haubles mentioned they had some slides about some new features and funcionality which might improve the challenges we're seeing.

@Floppy @Mastodon This was one of the things I was most excited to have seen. My big concern is with instances finding the balance between being open and a default recommendation and also fighting spam sign ups which continue to be problematic. It's something I've wanted to have some time to look at for a while now because I'd love to open sign ups but have safe guards to massively reduce the risk of spam from both automated bots and the seemingly farms of human operators creating spam accounts here.