Speaking from experience, they could fix their spam and abuse woes very easily by just closing new signups or restricting it in some way. Simplest would be invite-only (built-in feature of Mastodon), or restrict the signups page based on IP range whitelist/blacklist.
EDIT: Their domain has been reinstated, and they disabled open signups. New registrations now require moderator approval https://pawoo.net/@pawoo_support/111249170584706318
:pawoo: Announcement! Thank you for always using Pawoo. Due to server congestion, new registrations will now require approval by a moderator. Thank you very much for your cooperation.
you mean they should turn off the user-count-go-uppinator? but how would the fediverse grow like that?? /s
(sorry i just have opinions on large instances)
The nature of a site like reddit (and lemmy and all other alternatives) means a large userbase is necessary. Not at the expense of CSAM, but also everyone trying to gatekeep lemmy doesn’t realise that we’ll die a slow death unless the fediverse grows by at least 10-20x.
I’m pretty sure they were complicit in this and were not really trying to fight it.
