I’m on unredacted.org which was free at the timebut currently they ask for a $5 donation (Monero/crypto accepted) to get an account. Their ToS is basically just “don’t post anything illegal”. They also run an XMPP server, Shadowsocks bridges, Tor exit nodes and a Monero node.
Hi! Even with the current measures like email verification in place, it is difficult (but it helps!) to prevent bad actors who try flood the network with annoying and often even very much illegal content. On top of that, even until today users contact me to seek help with their forgotten password, but since tchncs didn’t force email in the beginning, it then makes it hard to impossible to have them validate themself in order to get help with the password reset.
If you decide to join a server without safeguards like email verification, it is likely to struggle from high moderation load or the owner gave up already / does not care, which then would make it likely for the server to become a) abandoned and later shut down or/and b) blocked by major servers for their own safety because they have to deal with all those spammers that keep coming from it.