Comment by Springtime
3 years ago
>every discord is locked behind a email+cell phone barrier
Unless it's changed recently users can enter Discord communities without an email via an invite link*, just choosing a username. It's what made onboarding so easy and similar to just joining an IRC server with a nick.
What's been ironic is since Freenode had their spam issues years back there was a push among many channels on that network to allow only registered users (ie: email tied to nicks) to post, which has continued over in the migration to the Libera network and I find really unfortunate for such channels of those networks as low friction and less permanence in ties to identity have been a distinguishing feature of IRC. (Obviously this doesn't affect IRC broadly but those are among the largest networks for tech communities).
I just tried doing this and was immediately met by a "you must verify your account by phone" screen.
Ah, just re-checked that community and apparently they must have phone-gated it recently, as I haven't seen Blender use that before. Perhaps they got hit with spam, which I know is the reason some add the requirement, even temporarily (which I suppose circles back to the annoying side-effects of spam).
This isn't just a server-specific thing. Discord can and will randomly lock you out of your account completely until you verify with a (unique) phone number even if none of the servers you're in require it. If you have a discord account with no phone number, it will probably happen to you eventually.