Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually, fb still requires the phone number, if you try to open up a few accounts in succession. You can't use throwaway numbers or Google Voice numbers either. So it's actually pretty hard these days to open a Fb (Or Hotmail or Gmail) account without a legit (cellphone) number.
throwaway numbers can mean many things even a 5 dollar sim. some services even let you change phone numbers on a whim cell numbers are mobile in more than one way and very easy.
Twitter forces all new users to enter a valid phone number
191–200 of 393 posts
Re: Twitter forces all new users to enter a valid phone number
#192Re: Twitter forces all new users to enter a valid phone number
#193The article states and asks: > I had a new IP > I had a newly installed operating system and browser. > What exactly about my behavior is unusual? It's not that this behavior is unusual (though, it is), it's that this behavior looks exactly like a bot. It's sad, but this is the state of the world now. If you're a big actor like Twitter, you end up blocking anything that looks like a bot, with an escape hatch a user c…
Re: Twitter forces all new users to enter a valid phone number
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
Twitter knows what IP you connect from, which might easily be through a VPN. The flip side of low-friction authentication is epidemic abuse by trolls, which arguably damages Twitter's brand. Unfortunately, most people simply don't understand the implications of any of this. Well, so you say.
>> epidemic abuse by trolls, I am soo tried of hearing this excuse for mass censorship First of it MASSIVELY over used to the point where people call anyone that disagrees with them "a troll" or a bot. Twitter is hurting their own brand by their obvious political bias and selective enforcement of rules largely dependent on outrage mobs to "report" rule violations. Like real names policies before it, these types of "v…
Cause let me tell you, the number of accounts I've seen whose commentd get overrun with bots is not trivial at all.
Re: Twitter forces all new users to enter a valid phone number
#195We'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…
Did this sentence make anyone else really sad?
Re: Twitter forces all new users to enter a valid phone number
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
> twitter is just sillines Would you say the same about your phone number? If not, why? If I run my business on Twitter (or YouTube, or Facebook) is it that different from a bank?
No, why would he? They're completely different. Twitter is nothing at all like a phone number.
Re: Twitter forces all new users to enter a valid phone number
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
in the UK you can wander into any phone shop and get 5 SIMs for free also: the phone companies allow you to receive SMS without putting a penny on them
Not much use if you need 200k numbers for your russian botnet
costs nothing also
Re: Twitter forces all new users to enter a valid phone number
#198A lot of people on here seem to be concerned about hiding their identity. Why? I don't understand. If you don't want to stand behind your statements you're part of the problem. Thus you shouldn't be part of the Twitter troll squad that creates unnecessary BS around movies and political events. Grow a pair and join the convo as your real self.
* a queer youth in a deeply conservative area takes their life in their hands by being authentic w.r.t their sexuality
* a conservative employee of a liberal company risks their livelihood by expressing beliefs espoused by a mainstream political party
* a feminist activist is stalked by creeps who disagree with their legitimate speech and have their dox at hand thanks to the real-name policy
You don't need to reach very far to find plenty of specific instances of the above issues. Furthermore, that's limiting the conversation to the American political arena. The issue is immeasurably more severe in areas of the world where political violence is a fact of daily life. One commonality is that the chilling effect is strongest among marginalized groups - real-name policies wind up as tools for majoritarian oppression, as the opinions that are most safe to voice are the ones that are the least controversial. This is just a small sample of topics in this fairly well-researched space; check out[1][2] for a lot more depth.I guess what I'm getting at is that a real-name policy would work great if negative consequences only accrued to genuine bad-faith actors like bots and propagandists. Sadly, that's not the case - completely civil, legitimate speech is chilled by the threat of physical violence, social crucifixion and financial disaster enabled by gratuitous real-name policies.
On top of that, it's not like real-name policies are some kind of panacea for the problems you mention. Facebook aggressively enforces theirs, and they were hardly immune to the problems Twitter has dealt with in/since the 2016 election. If your concern is more around people saying stupid shit "around movies and political events" - again, take a look at Facebook. Your great-uncle Larry doesn't care that everyone knows he thinks Obama was born in Kenya.
This is why I'm more keen on alternative solutions, like the identity-vouching providers discussed up-thread. Instead of a real name acting as a proxy for legitimate interest in participating in a given conversation, use a trusted third party to establish that a given account really is, say, a voting American citizen with service-specific hash s (to avoid sockpuppeting) and not some guy in a basement in SPT. That way, you get some of the hypothetical benefits of a real-name policy w.r.t cutting down on abuse while maintaining the freedom of expression afforded by pseudonyms.
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[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/09/facebooks-real-name-po... [2] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/07/case-pseudonyms
Re: Twitter forces all new users to enter a valid phone number
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
There has got to be a better way to do online identity as a society! The most promising ideas I've heard about are WebAuthn and Estonia's digital identity system. How long is it going to take to get out of the dark ages and get this right? One thing I'm sure of, uploading a scan of my passport to every website is not an appealing thought. Besides the inconvenience, do I really want my passport spread around on dozens…
There isn't any good way to maintain perfect privacy while also rejecting bots/trolls with 20 accounts.
Suppose WebAuthn was the standard authentication scheme everywhere. People used a series of tokens (Yubikeys, phone apps, etc.) with private keys which they use to authenticate to services. The government runs a department where you present them proof of your identity and the public keys from your Yubikeys/whatever, and they would publish a cryptographically signed electronic message which read the equivalent of "the owner of the private keys associated with public keys a, b, and c is a real person"). Then, when you signed up for an account at Twitter, or wherever, they could quickly check that published list and know that you where a real person.
Advantages, you own your own private keys and completely manage your online identity. The government doesn't have any control over where you log in, or who you sign up for accounts with. Also, you can remain anonymous to the site you sign up to. They can check that you're a real person and only signed up once, without actually knowing your real name or other details.