First part of the process is making an email. Seems simple enough EXCEPT all major free email addresses require you to setup a secondary email to verify your primary email and if you don't, chances are you can't use this email to verify your account for account creations.
This is obviously done in hopes that you link an email that is linked to you in your verification step. This has nothing to do to ensure protection or get rid of automated accounts because it's easy for automation to do this secondary step.
So, you're forced to create two new emails from two different email providers and cross-link them.
Once that's done, you've got to setup your X account which is a nightmare in itself because their new "confirm you aren't a bot" thing is garbage with 10 questions you have to answer. It took me two tries to get it but since I took so long, it didn't properly load when I got it and I was forced to do it two more times to get it. That's answer 40 questions to prove you aren't a robot.
The irony is my X account got banned for being a bot even though I've never used a botting program ever and I don't even use AI to post.
Proton Mail doesn't. Or at least it didn't when I last made one.
I've made proton accounts that were almost immediately banned and claimed to be breaking Swiss law. I just wanted a throwaway/alt email for pirate gaming accounts I didn't want to link back in any way to my prior official ones. Or I needed to make a new throwaway disc acc because I forgot the email pass to my existing one and got asked for verification I couldn't provide anymore. Forgetting the login details is on me, won't disagree on that, but at times the service is just flat out impossible to use because it, and others, don't like you trying to set up other accounts with brand new emails.
It does if you want to use the email to create an X account with it. They changed this years ago.
Can confirm with OP. It does require an activation email now, and it can't be one of the free ones, and unless you're paying Proton, you're only allowed one Proton account for each email account. So it all comes back to the same point, where you need to verify through one of the big ones.
I miss the days when all you needed to make an account was a username and a password. Zero email required.
Same, same.
Back when ICQ was the preferred chat service, usenet was how you sent files, and TEN was how you played with others.