Are new Steemit accounts being validated?

I've been monitoring the situation with sign-up issues. There's spare SP to delegate to accounts, but there have been problems with SMS validation in some regions.

For now the team are manually validating new accounts to try and cut the numbers created using scripts that will drain the available SP take user names that others may want. The last update I've seen is by @sneak on Github. He's updated the sign-up page to make it clear that people will have to wait for the final validation email and he says that the backlog should be getting processed, possibly from today. If you know anyone who is trying to create an account then please let them know it's being worked on and I hope they can be patient.

The stats I've seen may not be right up to date, but it looks like only a handful of accounts have been created in the last few days. These may have been via alternative methods. There's AnonSteem or you can do it from the Steem command line app. Both of these have a cost , so are probably not going to be used for bulk account creation.

In future we may see slower growth than before, but if they are real people then that's not such a problem. At some point Steemit should go viral and then they will need automated validation. I expect this is being worked on. I think there should be more than one way to do it to cover all regional and technological limitation. It's getting harder to verify whether a human is involved. Other services have suffered from lots of fake accounts as they have value and there are companies that will supply them using cheap workers. It's definitely a challenge to get it right.

Oh, and May the 4th be with you!

I'm Steve, the geeky guitarist.

Mine cryptocurrency in the cloud at Eobot, including Steem. You can earn as you chat using WowApp. If you use these links I get a small reward. You can recruit others to do the same.