I saw that this instance had a large number of users so I thought “more users->more content->more fun”. Apparently, I had to prove my value by answering 3 questions that showed my interest in their community and my value as a potential future member.
What could possibly be my value to a general purpose instance besides money? I’m a software/cloud engineer so I guess there are things I could help with, but my guess is they were expecting me to say “I can donate”.
I get it, they need donations to exist, but this upfront? And to a community I don’t even know? Maybe I’m imagining things and they were looking for something else?
Do all instances rely on donations? I’d like to contribute to the instances I enjoy at some point. But only if I feel at home with them, not as a prerequisite to join.
I can be douchy or sarcastic for humor but I wasn’t in the questions. I just didn’t sell myself the way they wanted to because I really wasn’t expecting someone to read that. When I saw someone was actually reading it I immediately thought it was about money because they are obviously not filtering bots with that strategy when Chatgpt exists.
They are also not going to filter people with malicious intention, they invented lying a long time ago.
I guess my issue was overthinking.