Comment by nabaraz

2 years ago

Most of the use-cases for requiring a phone number to sign up for a service e.g. Twitter, Signal seems to be to avoid spam. Atleast allegedly!

What alternatives can be used instead, something that is easily accessible/available to the general public but not easy to obtain to create mass users?

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nabaraz

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jonasdoesthings  2 years ago

Instead of heavily limiting account creation, Discord for example limits the possibility to message users outside of your network by default. Only people you have added as friend or you share a server with are allowed to message you by default.

For signal that would be harder to implement since it's more focused on 1o1 chats instead of groups, maybe if spam gets out of hand they could use a grey-listing approach like Instagram does where users outside your network get moved to the "message requests" inbox by default.

  • Nuzzerino  2 years ago

    Discord, while overall better than Telegram for privacy, will flag your ip / device / identity and require a phone number for new accounts if you do something like use a message archiver to back up conversations. Took me years to get the block removed (but not for my work account). It was a privacy nightmare for me and when I had to get an account for work I had to sign up for an additional cell phone service, which cost me thousands to this day.

    I’m still nervous about making new accounts in case it triggers some process to lock me out of my one account that I don’t have a phone number for. I couldn’t join the baldurs gate 3 discord to find people to play the game with because it required a phone number on the account, which I was already forced to use for my work account.

    On the other hand, I’m glad they actually do enforce their rules, unlike Telegram (which is a haven for scammers, pedos, radical communists, open market drug dealers, and terrorists, not to mention the soul-depleting interactions I’ve had overall with chat rooms there)