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Twitter forces all new users to enter a valid phone number

sucky.ninja

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Re: Twitter forces all new users to enter a valid phone number

#71

Post by dx87 »

daybreak wrote: post #22

I had this problem when creating a new Twitter account last month. Within minutes after setting up an account via iOS app, was locked out for "suspicious behavior". Didn't even tweet once. Residential IP. They wanted me to add a phone number. I went to the help section and wrote a pissed off message to customer support...if they wanted my phone # they should have asked for it instead of accusing me. Shortly after, my…

I had the same thing happen. During signup it asked for my phone number but said it was optional. A couple of minutes after I created my account, it was locked and they said it required a phone number to prove I wasn't a bot. I just closed out my account because I only planned to use it to follow some people anyway.

Re: Twitter forces all new users to enter a valid phone number

#72

Post by Sendotsh »

tetromino_ wrote: post #49
puttycat wrote: post #21

Handy tip: buy the cheapest pre-charged SIM and use it for this kind of verifications.

Only if you don't mind that the next person who gets assigned your burner phone number might be able to take over your account.

You don't do it each time, you keep a single prepaid SIM as your "spam number", like people have spam gmail accounts for online competitions and random crap.

I've been doing this for years. I have a $2 prepaid sim in an old phone sitting in my desk drawer. It's always off, and I only turn it on to approve a new signup or something. That way they can sell my number to marketers as much as they want, it doesn't bother my "real" number with robocalls and spam texts.

What's mostly surprising is the insane increase in spam texts in the last year or so of using this method. I used to turn it on once a month or so to sign up to a new site, and have a few random texts... these days I get dozens a month, only proving more than ever that this method is worth doing.

Re: Twitter forces all new users to enter a valid phone number

#73

Post by 14 »

mythz wrote: post #35

I'm assuming it's to try de-anonymize users and make bots less cost effective. Nothing propagates faster than hate on Twitter and seeing as it's being actively weaponized to spread propaganda, I'm all for new measures that try slow the spread down - esp. given nothing else has worked thus far.

I wish there was a service out there that you could use your phone number and they will validate that you are real for companies and they would be separate from Twitter or any company using them so the user remains anonymous. I don't like some of the nasty stuff the net throws my way either but I do ultimately think if I had to choose a censored internet vs uncensored but full of negatives, I would chose the uncensored. The internet is one of mankind's greatest achievements. Once you start censoring it, abuses of such control ultimately will happen.

Re: Twitter forces all new users to enter a valid phone number

#74

Post by hombre_fatal »

vkou wrote: post #57
deogeo wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You misunderstand - not divulging what triggered the suspicion isn't lying. Claiming a phone number is required due to suspicious activity, when in fact it is required of almost all new accounts, is .

I'd find anyone creating a Twitter account in 2019 to be somewhat suspect.

New people are born every day.

Re: Twitter forces all new users to enter a valid phone number

#75

Post by marcosdumay »

numbsafari wrote: post #38
_jomo wrote: post #25

They have been doing this for any account registered from a VPN or Tor. However, you can simply appeal the block and tell them you haven't tweeted and not broken any rules. They will send you an automated mail, offering to validate your phone number, or reply to the mail if your problem is not solved. Just reply to the mail. Unfortunately, processing the request takes anywhere between 10 minutes and 2 weeks; usually…

When I worked in banking we would do this with suspect transactions. The feature was called “Strategic Delay”. After awhile, all of our project plans (this was back in the days of Gantt charts) would include two weeks of effort on “Strategic Delay”, even if that feature wasn’t involved.

Yeah, I have abandoned a bank due to bad rules on its strategic delays on transactions. Every time I had a problem I could solve it with a quick call, even outside of working hours, but it was a bother.

It's not an inherently bad thing to do, but it's easy to overdo, and on a company that depends on network effects it can be very dangerous.

Re: Twitter forces all new users to enter a valid phone number

#76

Post by alexbecker »

daybreak wrote: post #22

I had this problem when creating a new Twitter account last month. Within minutes after setting up an account via iOS app, was locked out for "suspicious behavior". Didn't even tweet once. Residential IP. They wanted me to add a phone number. I went to the help section and wrote a pissed off message to customer support...if they wanted my phone # they should have asked for it instead of accusing me. Shortly after, my…

Also happened to me. I ended up giving them a Google Voice #.

Re: Twitter forces all new users to enter a valid phone number

#77

Post by munk-a »

numbsafari wrote: post #38
_jomo wrote: post #25

They have been doing this for any account registered from a VPN or Tor. However, you can simply appeal the block and tell them you haven't tweeted and not broken any rules. They will send you an automated mail, offering to validate your phone number, or reply to the mail if your problem is not solved. Just reply to the mail. Unfortunately, processing the request takes anywhere between 10 minutes and 2 weeks; usually…

When I worked in banking we would do this with suspect transactions. The feature was called “Strategic Delay”. After awhile, all of our project plans (this was back in the days of Gantt charts) would include two weeks of effort on “Strategic Delay”, even if that feature wasn’t involved.

This is slightly different though, twitter is silly and unnecessary - access to your money is not.

During some of the recent shows highlighting issues with payday lending these sorts of strategic delays were mentioned in the light that they can cause irregularly paid workers to have problems actually getting money out of their paycheck - forcing them into more borrowing until they are able to clear their checks.

Again, twitter is just silliness, but the banking example is a lot more serious of a case where the pros and cons need to be very carefully weighed.

Re: Twitter forces all new users to enter a valid phone number

#78

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

tyingq wrote: post #59

I don't use Twitter much, but every time I click on a Twitter link from my Android phone...it pops an error page. The page says either something about an error, or that I'm rate limited. A page refresh usually then works fine and displays the page. Is this related to similar attempts to block bots/spammers? Or maybe just something wrong on my end?

I think they rate limit based on the HTTP referrer. That happens to me but it's always gone away when I manually copy-paste the URL.

Re: Twitter forces all new users to enter a valid phone number

#79

Post by danso »

ProAm wrote: post #5

Twitter should have imploded years ago. No one seems to remember that Donald Trump saved Twitter. It was for sale and couldn't find a buyer, no one wanted the CEO position so they bribed the old CEO to step back in, losing TONS of money. Then the at time presidential candidate used Twitter to market his campaign. It's harmful social commentary that forces people/media/influences/etc to use catchy one-liners to spike…

It's true that in late 2016, Twitter was reported to be potentially bid on and purchased by companies like Google and Salesforce [0]. Though looking at its stock price history, it remained around its end-of-2016 price, until 2018 when it finally showed a profit in late 2017 [1]. In that time, according to that Recode article, its user count only increased by 3% from 2017 to 2018, and revenue only increased by 12%, comparing 2018Q1 to 2016Q1 (Facebook's revenue went up 122% in that period). As a frequent Twitter user for the past decade, my impression is that maybe Trump's election made Twitter more of an "official" place for "important" things. But that added prestige also resulted in far more scrutiny that Twitter had ever had regarding bots and abusive behavior, necessitating them to have actual measures and policies (and, presumably, more staff dedicated towards that).

I don't think it's definitive to say that Trump directly saved Twitter, though. Twitter was already on a trajectory to be the place for breaking news. Whereas Facebook's attempt at such as basically imploded. But maybe Trump's habit of using Twitter so prominently basically cemented Twitter as a habit for many other users, especially those in the media.

0: https://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/23/twitter-may-receive-formal-b...

1: https://www.recode.net/2018/6/13/17455464/twitter-jack-dorse...

Re: Twitter forces all new users to enter a valid phone number

#80

Post by inopinatus »

We're going this way as well (requiring & verifying phone numbers, not locking accounts).

We don't have a problem with bots, but users in the "not so tech savvy" segment tend to switch/discard/forget their email address. Rather than try to recover their account with us, this group will subsequently just create a new one, and then wonder & complain that their profiles/settings/content/histories aren't carried over. We fix them up after an identity check. It's both a support burden and a negative user experience.

Turns out that phone numbers, whilst also subject to flux, have better long-term congruence to identity, and thereby help us to detect account duplication and manage it.

People also make fewer errors in entering their phone number.

It irks me that public sentiment could be normalized against supplying a phone number due to abuse by the global-scale consumer surveillance utilities, because those of us running trustworthy businesses can use it to legitimately provide a better user experience.

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