Same happened to me. It's mainly caused by a bug in Lemmy itself, so I'm sure this issue will get fixed at some point. It might definitely scare people off the fediverse.
I completely agree with the three questions for screening. It only took me a few minutes to answer after reading the guidelines. It looks like people are making a bigger fuzz out of this than it really is.
I started with RIf for ten first few years and then switched over to Sync. I loved the customization that Sync provides