VPN endpoints would not necessarily have low IP reputation. A VPN provider that allows its users to spam the internet is probably not a good one anyway. And besides, that would not inhibit registration, it would just make users fill out a form to apply so the server operator would have to go through and approve it.
Doesn’t have to be a crypto miner. Just has to be any sort of computationally intense task. I think the ideal would be some sort of JavaScript that integrates that along with the captcha. For example, have some sort of computationally difficult math problem where the server already knows the answer, and the answer is then fed into a simple video game engine to procedurally generate a ‘level’. The keyboard and mouse input of the player would then be fed directly back to the server in real time, which could decide if it’s actually seeing a human playing the correct level.
I’d do a few things.
First, make signing up computationally expensive. Some javascript that would have to run client side, like a crypto miner or something, and deliver proof to the server that some significant amount of CPU power was used.
Second, some type of CAPTCHA. ReCaptcha with the settings turned up a bit is a good way to go.
Third, IP address reputation checks. Check IP addresses for known spam servers, it’s the same thing email servers do. There’s realtime blacklists you can query against. If the client IP is on them, don’t allow registration but only allow application to register.
This is absolutely true, and this is how the internet was back in the old days before Big tech and megaplatforms. People would set up little servers on their cable modems using spare laptops. It was experimental, it was imperfect, but it was ours. One side effect of this, was that you had to be at least a little bit smart to get yourself connected to it. Even if that just meant knowing that connecting to it was something that you wanted to do. That weeded out a lot of idiots who contribute low quality discussion. Also, because there is no giant company with a financial incentive to get everybody to use it as much as possible, things were built for raw functionality rather than trying to make them easy for people to get addicted to in 30 seconds. That naturally makes them more usable for anybody with an IQ over 90.
Also, no advertisements. No sponsored posts.
Absolutely I use ad block. Ublock origin, plus a couple other privacy related extensions, plus browser configured with most privacy settings turned up all the way.
Most publishers seem to have no interest in giving me a good browsing experience, only in shoving as many ads as possible down my throat and violating my privacy as much as possible. So I have zero sympathy. I have sympathy for the smaller websites that then get locked as well, that wouldn’t otherwise have intrusive ads, but I am not going to subject myself to the larger ones just for their benefit.
Without ad block I have found a lot of websites almost totally unusable, or significantly more time wasting. Reddit is of course a big one, new Reddit without ad block is a total clusterfuck. YouTube is also pretty bad.
Thing is, I’m happy to pay. I’m looking forward to an era when I can do microtransactions in crypto to pay a website a couple pennies for content I like.