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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

#261

Post by cooper12 »

munk-a wrote: post #77
numbsafari wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Agai…

> twitter is just silliness

It was one of the premier sources for propaganda during a certain country's recent election. It has been used to coordinate protests. It's been used to break national news. You can get minute-by-minute updates of events from it. Let's not pretend that one of the world's most-used communication platforms doesn't play a huge role in modern discourse.

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

#262

Post by propogandist »

tyingq wrote: post #66
ridgewell wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you trying to do so from Firefox / a reddit app? This is fairly normal and the general conspiracy theory is that it's an erroneous error to get you to download the Twitter app once and for all.

Stock chrome on an Android phone. Most often from a Twitter link on HN. I'd say I get an error 90+% on the first try, and the refresh usually works the first time... occasionally, I need to do two. Bone stock phone, nothing notable about it or the browser. Doesn't happen on my Windows or Linux desktops.

Why would you run stock chrome on android? Use a privacy respecting browser like firefox or Brave and install an ad-blocker like Ublock before browsing the web.

Chrome does not respect user privacy and is designed to not support add-ons as it will hurt Google's core advertising business.

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

#263

Post by thekyle »

CoryG89 wrote: post #253
sadris wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Require a deposit to sign up. If you quit you get it back. If you get banned you lose it.

This is an interesting idea. Doubles as a strategy for monetizing.

I suppose you could take the deposits and earn interest on them as a possible supplemental revenue stream.

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

#264

Post by propogandist »

gruez wrote: post #112
inapis wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um wasn’t there a case where one of the big 3 providers in US was selling real time location data?

The ToS of those providers prohibit the use of that except with explicit consent. I'm aware that the providers do little verification that consent was given, but I'm doubt that established companies such as facebook or twitter are going to risk a PR fiasco to get better anti-fraud numbers.

Yeah...in theory. They'll sell the data until it becomes a big news item

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/01/t-mobile-sprint-...

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

#265

Post by nradov »

interwho wrote: post #219
kgwxd wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did they require any more PII to do it over the phone?

No, I just had to open a support ticket. That said, it definitely added significant friction to signing up, and took two days for the ticket to be approved.

Unlike some other popular sites, at least it's possible for a regular user to open a support ticket.

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

#266

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

deogeo wrote: post #90
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've wanted this as a service forever. Does anyone do it?

I believe Google's captcha does. With the unfortunate side-effect of Google de-anonymizing everyone they let through - as you'll know if you try to access something behind captcha through Tor, and get stuck in an infinite loop helping Google train their artificial vision. They claim it's against bots, but no matter how well you identify traffic lights and fire hydrants, it won't let you through.

Google's works with JS, though, right? It's not a service where you feed it a request and it responds how likely that request is to be spam, right?

I know JS is probably better for this, since you can do all sorts of things like measure how the user types and scrolls and whatnot.

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

#267

Post by systematical »

This doesn't really solve the problem. But it does make it a pain in the butt for me to just create an anonymous account to bitch about random stuff on, which I've tried over TOR before and they don't make it easy. If I am highly motivated to create fake account, I'll create a fake account through a burner or more some service like twilio.

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

#268

Post by thinkloop »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #140
est31 wrote: post #120

The other component is that once they have the phone number, they can do anything with it they want, unless you leave the network. E.g. facebook once did the same, they required phone numbers "for two factor authentication". They promised to not use the numbers for anything else. A few years later they started sending SMS spam to users about what their friends did on facebook, and now facebook users can enter the num…

> Your only choice as individual user is to leave the platform. That's not even enough anymore. You also have to make sure that every one of your contacts do not upload their address book to conveniently find friends like you who may or may not be on the network. And that they don't tag you in images, events, etc. You're an entry in the Facebook database, whether you have or have had an active profile or not.

I'm surprised that no nation or union (ie EU) has fought this. If people exchange phone numbers, are they also giving each other implicit rights to share them with anyone else? If not, shouldn't platforms that enable this en mass be reprimanded for it?

It is currently impossible to remain anonymous, regardless of whether you participate in the system or not.

In my case, given the density of my network on social media, and their propensity to fall for dark patterns that siphon private information - had I never owned a computer and lived off the grid, all the major tech companies would still know my: name, age, address, contact info, hometown, family members, income bracket, ethnicity, general dna (many family members did dna tests), and more.

Shouldn't I have a say in any of that? Shouldn't things like address book importing be restricted/illegal?

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

#269

Post by o10449366 »

brownbat wrote: post #211
H1Supreme wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do have a Google voice number, but I noticed one or two places recently that won't accept that anymore. Mind sharing where? I've use my Google Voice number exclusively for 6 or 7 years now. Can't say I've ever ran into such a thing.

Sites that require phone number verification often block numbers allocated for VoIP services for fear of spammers. YMMV if you've tethered your GV number to a physical device at some point. I've run into this semi-frequently over the years, and it's always extremely frustrating when it happens, but somehow I can't remember exactly where either. Old references online point to Facebook, Line, and Snapchat: https://www.…

FWIW I may have just signed up at the right time, but both my Facebook and Snapchat are tied to my GV number and I've never had any issues.

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

#270

Post by [deleted] »

dymk wrote: post #222
CamperBob2 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the link to the EFF page I added to the post? Why should Twitter be considered any more trustworthy than Facebook when they ask me for something they don't need to know? They can avoid being victimized by spam and propaganda some other way... preferably some other way that I couldn't trivially defeat by giving them the number of a throwaway SIM card or a public phone booth.

How else would you suggest they combat spam? How do you receive a verification SMS on a public phone booth? Most actual humans have a phone number, and Twitter wants a semi-1:1 mapping between human and Twitter account. Spammers have hundreds. This seems like a reasonable way to greatly increase the cost of making accounts for spammers.

[deleted]
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