Yes

Thanks for being so transparent about all this.

I think the verification period is, in practice, not something out of the ordinary. Two examples come to mind: 1. In many (most?) larger Facebook groups, you’re asked to answer questions and your application gets manually assessed by a moderator before being let in. Very similar to how it works here. 2. While you can get a new reddit account in seconds, you are blocked from many subreddits for 24> hours as an anti-spam/trolling measure and there are often karma thresholds for subreddits as well.

The first week or so with a new reddit account really sucks, but here I’m up and running without any artificial restrictions within hours of submitting my signup form.

/r/neoliberal replacement +1. We definitely need a community about a movie about worms.

I don’t disagree with your comment, but I think many long-time reddit users will say that reddit was better long before it grew to 400+ million users. A lot has been written about how online communities, when they reach a certain size, become worse. Easily-digestible (and often subpar) content get upvoted by a broader mass of subreddit users while previously appreciated and easily-found discussions get drowned out.

I think the point I’m trying to make is that Lemmy or any other reddit alternative would be better off if they didn’t aim for 400+ million users. So measuring success beyond measuring the DAU. And I don’t think they are. But yes, to even reach 1 million users, the signup process should be straight forward and fast, and the overall user experience smooth. I guess a slow signup process helps with scaling to ensure the latter.

When the floodgates open during the subreddit blackout, the reddit alternative that you can easily sign up for and that can handle the load might “win.” Hopefully there will be more than one, because the centralized nature of reddit is obviously why we’re having this problem in the first place.