Registrations should require a valid email address and temporary/disposable (e.g. temp-mail.org ) email services should be rejected.
Note this should not be implemented as a whitelist; “obscure” email services such as Protonmail, Tutanota and personal email servers should be allowed.
Pros:
- Cuts down on the number of trolls attempting to register, reducing load on mods and admins.
- Improves our standing with other instances.
- Ensures users have the ability to reset their password.
Cons:
- Has privacy concerns - people may not want to associate their email address with everything.
- Users may not (and perhaps should not have to) trust the admins of this instance with their email.
- May not be supported well by Lemmy, and/or require a blacklist that needs updating.
Aye and nay in the comments, please.
So I guess it comes down to ease. With anonymizers/disposables, you instantly have an email address once you open the page. With other email providers, you typically need to go through a registration process, often with a captcha. Time to spin up is slower.
Doesn’t defeat everybody or make it impossible to make multiple troll account, but ends up costing a bit more effort. The less convenient it is to do, the fewer people will bother.
Though someone else’s comment here re: there being something of an arms race finding non-blocked temp mail providers is valid. How much effort is required to keep up?
The effort is placed on the wrong people when trying to maintain a blacklist of emails.
Maintaining a blacklist is lots of effort for the admins.
The normal users we want to join are inconvenienced.
The spammers are using automated tools, so they don’t have any burden and get in anyway.