It’s becoming increasingly clear that this is no longer a debate about “MFA good” vs. “MFA bad.” It has shifted into a critique of failed leadership and technical hubris. Vlad, you’ve repeatedly threatened to silence “uncivil” discussion, yet you’ve spent this entire thread insulting and mocking the community. You have called users ignorant, lazy, cavemen, etc. You don’t get to demand a “professional” tone from the community while simultaneously dropping lines like:
That is the definition of a double standard. You claim you’re “exhausted” by this conversation, but you don’t get to be tired of a fire you started through unilateral action and a complete lack of empathy for your user base. When you make a decision that creates friction for thousands of people, you owe them an ear, not a middle finger.
Absolute Security vs. Community ROI As others have pointed out, applying security without context is just dogma. By forcing MFA on every single throwaway account, you are prioritizing a theoretical shield over actual community growth. You are burning the village to “save” it from a threat that could be 90% mitigated by simple Trust Level restrictions on uploads and links.
The Real-World Consequences This isn’t just “4.7 seconds of friction.” I have personally seen the fallout of this “my way or the highway” attitude. I know of at least one talented creator who has quit scripting entirely-not just left the site, but stopped the hobby-because of the toxic way this rollout was handled.
This person was a vital part of the LGBT scripting community, a niche that is already underserved. When you lose a creator like that, you aren’t just losing a “user metric”; you are losing a sub-community’s momentum. These are the human costs that aren’t captured in your technical “threat models,” but they are the costs that will ultimately lead to this site’s stagnation.
If the goal was to make the site “safe,” you might have succeeded in a vacuum. But in reality, you’ve just made it a place where people no longer feel welcome to create.