Hello everyone,
I've tried to join Steem a year or two ago and I remember that I had problems back then with the registration process. I believe they closed registrations for a short time and I think they also required a phone number for signup (which I didn't like).
Today I tried it with Hive and as you can see, here I am, but it took like 40 minutes to register. The providers without mandatory verification didn't work. They were either under maintenance or the website didn't react at all. Then I tried it with a different browser and different IP. That also didn't work. I then considered to pay the fee. But that would cost me $3 in BTC value itself + transaction fee + a surcharge of $2. So about $7-8 in total. (That was when I was already 35 minutes into the process) So I ended up using a provider without a fee but which required a phone number.
The whole process was really a pain in the ass and took away a good chunk of my time.
And I also find it rather complicated to understand which dApps to use for what now and that every dApp has a different way to log-in.
Anyway, enough of that, that was just a little feedback of my first expierence. And maybe these things will get easier in the future. I'm happy to be here now and to explore the world of decentralised social networks and other apps.