I saw that this instance had a large number of users so I thought "more users->more content->more fun". Apparently, I had to prove my value by answering 3 questions that showed my interest in their community and my value as a potential future member.
What could possibly be my value to a general purpose instance besides money? I'm a software/cloud engineer so I guess there are things I could help with, but my guess is they were expecting me to say "I can donate".
I get it, they need donations to exist, but this upfront? And to a community I don't even know? Maybe I'm imagining things and they were looking for something else?
Do all instances rely on donations? I'd like to contribute to the instances I enjoy at some point. But only if I feel at home with them, not as a prerequisite to join.
I believe they want to limit troll and bot accounts. I know that if I were hosting a community I would want to vet the members so that I didn't have to spend all my time dealing with compliants and having to delete comments and ban people.
Better a weak filter than none at all, I guess. They're not some multi-billion dollar corporation with the means to assign a lot of funds for spam mitigation.