There really should be a way to remove email activation in the core product. I have Discourse set up with SSO and the email verification step is adding a lot of friction for new users.
There is this plugin which turns it off but unfortunately I don’t have access to install plugins where I’m hosting (and it doesnt seem to work for everyone): Disable Email Verification for Discourse Plugin
It’s quite frustrating not being able to turn email activation off and there are many posts over the years with different people struggling with this. The core product should let Admins run a server the way they want.