this is bullshit designed to respond to increasing use of simplexchat and other platforms

and they still want to tie it to payment (so a credit card) so they can track people

and they are implementing it only after many years

a complex captcha that takes 10 minutes to solve would work just as well as payment, but they aren't doing it, and it certainly leaves me wondering if they are a honeypot. i can't prove it, but it's really suspicious it's taken so long to possibly roll out something that may require a credit card