Comment by johnnyanmac

spam/bots grew out of control. You need to do something to curtail that, and email verification seems to be the most seemless solution.

That said, I've had a burner email for as long as my personal email for this very reason. I even have 2 burner gmails. It's not exactly a huge invasive measure like a phone number (which I'd never give to a site that isn't trying to take payments. Hell, still haven't given Amazon my phone number).