That is really mis-characterising the situation. They are working hard to make the signup process as easy and smooth as possible, but it costs them money each time they open an account. With the current prices, it is either around $15 worth of STEEM per account, or delegating around $75 worth. Lots of users were abusing the system and creating hundreds/thousands of accounts just to milk the free STEEM. They had to switch over to a manual approval process to review the accounts before creating them to cut down on the abuse. They are working on a way to automate this, but it will take time to develop something that works well and can't be abused.