Not exactly sure how instant account creation will help in fighting bots. Manual review of user account creation at least somehow helped.
For example, when creating an account for my wife, it never went through successfully / most likely due to a fact both mine and her are created from the same static IP. I found that a good thing.
Account has been created at the end using my cli_wallet
With new option, in my personal opinion, we can only expect raise in Bot / spamming accounts as right now everyone can pay and get onboard instantly.
In ideal world, all new accounts should be reviewed. It's not a convenient solution, but what's even less convenient is current "rich got richer" by utilising tons of ghost accounts. It may directly lead to creation of Ponzi, even when Steemit is not that by a design.
Strongly support any updates and hard work done, but it would be useful to more directly address the strategy of fighting spam / bots. - the main obstacle of further steemit raise / and primarly source of frustration for our precious minnows.
On another side, if we can reach more people to join, that would be a huge benefit.
The options were always there before, Steemit just didn't show them on the register page.They aren't new and were always easy to find. I've created several accounts in the past using SteemConnect. The old/normal way for newcomers to signup has them give a phone number to prove their identity before Steemit pays the registration fee for them to sign up. It works the same way that other options work except you don't pay and the Steemit team has to manually verify accounts.
Ok, that would make sense. Still, I would be very interested to read more in-depth about the strategy of fighting bots and spam. Apart from bringing up wider audience, spam is currently most burning topic - and, in my opinion the biggest threat for health of the ecosystem.