The hCaptcha Barrier: Why Mastodon Automation Stalls at Email Verification

While OAuth can bypass Mastodon signup CAPTCHAs, hCaptcha's email verification layer is fundamentally different—it's hardened specifically against automation and creates an insurmountable scaling ceiling. For anyone building automated provisioning pipelines, this reveals a critical lesson: verification barriers placed post-signup are far more effective than signup gates, and mapping confirmation methods before deployment is essential to avoid wasted infrastructure.