Comment by omoikane
12 hours ago
Bluesky didn't require phone numbers back when it was invite only, and then there was a period of time after they allowed everyone to create accounts where users need a phone number to verify. That requirement might have been replaced by a captcha according to:
https://github.com/bluesky-social/social-app/issues/2762
But I didn't try to create an account recently, maybe they went back to requiring phone numbers.
Lots of services demand your phone number after the fact now, hoping to use the sunk cost fallacy to extort it out of you when you're in a hurry.
Walmart recently deleted my phone number from my account for vague reasons but most likely because another account had the same number. That other account is my wife and the number is our VoIP line. I have no desire to interact with walmart through my cell phone so I didn't give it to them. So I used a google voice number, which is not my number, to get back in. Then they just bought my actual cell number from my credit card company and autopopulated the field. Jokes on me!
> Then they just bought my actual cell number from my credit card company
Holy moly, don't you have any law at all to protect people's privacy ?
in the US? no.
But I don't think that's the case for Bluesky
It's because of spam. You're damned if you do and damned if you don't.
Ironically AI could fix this when trivial spam detection inference becomes cheap enough to throw away on every upload.
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