This is the way! There _has_ to be friction when getting access or the uneducated hordes of the internet will spoil it. I only use mailinglists and fediblocked instances for "social" media. Mainstream mastodon is useless and just a bad parody of x or fb.

Mailinglists are great, because more and more people do no longer know how to use email or follow the instructions to sign up for a mailinglist, so many interesting people tend to gather around the lists.