We are aware of an ongoing wave of subscription spam throughout the fediverse.

We are investigating avenues to mitigate this, but they will likely involve deep changes in the sign-up flow that may break sign-up from existing applications.

In the meantime, you can find helpful resources at https://about.iftas.org/2026/09/11/boom-protocol-spam/

#MastoAdmin

@MastodonEngineering

Please for the love of God put the captcha before the first email is send.

And please also make it configurable to put a manual approval before the fist email is send, since captchas are circumvented today for fractions of a cent.

It would be great if the signup process generated a random verification code that users must write on paper and photograph. This would allow us to verify that accounts are not created by AIs, residential proxies, or malicious bots in general.

@m @MastodonEngineering The suggestion in your last paragraph would make signing up hard to impossible for users with visual disabilities or motor disabilities, while (as someone else mentioned) being of dubious usefulness against subscription spam. Please keep #accessibility #a11y in mind when suggesting solutions.

@pauamma @MastodonEngineering

Please read https://lgbtqia.space/@m/117320713582769721

Please provide a alternative that makes AI signups more detectable or keep your criticism. Criticism is cheap and does mean nothing if you cannot come up with a single solution instead.

As it looks currently mastodon signups don't work at all because you cannot differentiate between a human and a bot.
And this is the most terrible solution.

@m @pauamma @MastodonEngineering "make a better suggestion or shut up" is not how you talk to people who point out massive accessibility problems. That's massively disrespectful.