Now that passkeys are so prevalent, many services are offering passwordless signup where you never have to make a password. Having a password at all bypasses the security benefits of passkeys. Similarly, using email as a recovery method means that the security of all of your accounts rely on the security of your email account. Requiring passwords/email is bad for user security and privacy, not to mention how easy it is to create new email accounts. I can say from experience that the email requirement doesn’t stop bots spamming your forum at all. One of the main reasons services have historically required an email is so you can recover your account in case you forget your password, but with passkeys they are stored in your password manager and synced across devices. You can even add multiple passkeys to an account, mostly eliminating the problem of people forgetting their password. Here’s some examples of sites that implement passwordless signup:
https://app.uninbox.com/ This one is especially good I think since it doesn’t require an email
https://www.kayak.com/