You used to be able to do this, but e-mail has been required for some time.

Over on Lemmy, it is the instance operator's choice whether or not to require e-mail, but most instances currently do as a measure to mitigate bot signups.

At least on old reddit, you can click "next" when it asks you for your email to skip that step.

Yeah, unfortunately, it only works on old reddit. It's quite amusing to see how they treat old and new reddit as entirely different platforms.

My experience has been your account will quickly get shadowbanned if you don't provide email.

I've even used burner emails and have been shadowbanned. email-less account definitely wouldn't get traction.

This was also my experience when I tried to register a custom domain. The only thing that worked for me was using a Gmail account that I had used with other, older, accounts.

You can leave the field empty during signup.

Yes, this used to be a feature of Reddit, not sure if it still is.

It used to be a feature of the entire internet, really. Email based signups weren't common in the infancy.

Yeah, I remember. I was born in the eighties. In my opinion this should still be a feature of the internet, remembering your username and password should be enough for a lot of things. Protection against bots can be achieved in any number of ways and there already exists ways to use temporary emails so I don't really get why most places still require you to use an email.

Edit: I mean, I do get it, I just don't like it.

I feel you. Things were nice and easy back then, before the greater population came and made everything terrible and spammed the daylights out of everything.

spam/bots grew out of control. You need to do something to curtail that, and email verification seems to be the most seemless solution.

That said, I've had a burner email for as long as my personal email for this very reason. I even have 2 burner gmails. It's not exactly a huge invasive measure like a phone number (which I'd never give to a site that isn't trying to take payments. Hell, still haven't given Amazon my phone number).

I agree with you, just was an observation about how things changed.

Yes I have many reddit accounts without an associated email.

Yes, it still is last I checked you just have to dodge a (mild) dark pattern they added suggesting otherwise.