Yup. @justinsunsteemit / @steemit would you like to comment on this ? Any ETA on when this will be fixed ?
This must be one of those "Steemit User Experience Improvements" you mentioned in your open letter that will help us onboard a bajillion users, right ?

Some more realistic steem account registration options (for now):

• https://anon.steem.network by witness @someguy123
• https://blocktrades.us/create-steem-account by witness @blocktrades
• https://travelfeed.io/join
• https://esteem.app/signup by witness @good-karma
• I've personally been creating accounts for people for years now. Just gotta reach out on twitter or msp discord. I have a stash of account creation credits, as well as INVITE tokens available

Whatever method you choose be sure to NEVER LOSE YOUR KEYS and to learn about the account recovery system in case you ever get hacked/phished and your keys are changed on you.

Right now, way too many accounts have their recovery partner set to steem which can no longer be trusted and is also currently non-responsive to account recovery requests. The damage from that alone is already massive.

How to change recovery account with SteemWorld.org