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Twitter forces all new users to enter a valid phone number
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- kaffee 8y agoSomething like this happened to me. It certainly prompted me to look for alternatives (e.g., Mastodon). You can start small: sign into Twitter every other month. IIRC, this will decrease the number of active users they report to investors.
- nemothekid 8y agoI can't get the article to load (hugged to death?), but I'd imagine the reason that they are finally moving on this is due to combat harassment. I can't blame Twitter for adding friction to its sign up process because of others abusing the platform.
- Mirioron 8y agoI could blame them, but considering everything else wrong with Twitter there is no point. Avoiding Twitter is easy and you lose very little.
- CBLT 8y agoAbout a year ago, there were a lot of topical submissions to HN (that I liked reading) but received community backlash, because they consisted almost entirely of posting tweets (of Trump et al) about the current political situation. The community here made an argument that I could agree with: if I wanted to read it, I should just follow them on Twitter. So I made a Twitter account, that I checked about once every two months, that followed the relevant players. I didn't make any tweets of my own and I didn't favorite or retweet anything. Just catching up on what people have been saying worked for my interests. Twitter banned me for Harassment. I had nothing that could have possibly offended anyone - I didn't even have a bio for my profile. I'd say the system assumed I was a robot? It was frustrating to me, because in order to appeal my ban, I had to provide my phone number. I don't want to give Twitter my phone number. I get the fewest spam calls of anyone I know, and I do that by protecting my phone number. Twitter has earned no trust from me, and is not getting my phone number. I tried to delete my account, but it needed my phone number to do that. I tried to sign out of the account so I could just see tweets as a guest, but it wanted my phone number for that too. Well, I signed out by deleting browser data, but there is still a tombstone on my email address in their database. This experience has sown distrust with me about Twitter's harassment numbers. It's not that I don't think harassment is a real problem, it's that I think they are often self-serving in their actions and analysis, and for them to say they're doing something because of harassment isn't enough for me anymore. We can speculate all we want about what their reasons might be, but to be so trusting as to take their harassment claim at face value isn't something I'll do.
- flattone 8y agoare daily active users not a thing that are reported to investors
- soared 8y agoMAU (monthly active users) is typically the metric they look at.
- Deimorz 8y agoTwitter specifically said they will no longer share their MAU numbers and will only report "monetizable daily active users" going forward: https://www.recode.net/2019/2/7/18215204/twitter-daily-active-users-dau-snapchat-q4-earnings https://www.recode.net/2019/2/7/18215204/twitter-daily-activ...
- flattone 8y agothats rad. cant imagine an advertiser doing legitimate spend justification on mau.
- bauerd 8y agoInstead of only logging in every other month you might as well ditch the service completely, no?
- ProAm 8y agoTwitter 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 retweets. People are mad that the media and journalist are overly sensationalizing but Twitter users just feed the machine.
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- gjs278 8y agotwitter means the president can talk directly to the american people in a very accessible way
- danso 8y agoIt'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-bid-shortly-suitors-said-to-include-salesforce-and-google.html https://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/23/twitter-may-receive-formal-b... 1: https://www.recode.net/2018/6/13/17455464/twitter-jack-dorsey-stock-growth-explained-profitability https://www.recode.net/2018/6/13/17455464/twitter-jack-dorse...
- burtonator 8y agoThis is the new norm... expect all services to require phone numbers due to spam and propaganda.
- Pfhreak 8y agoI have a really split opinion about this. On the one hand I've seen a lot of really hateful stuff lobbed around on sites like Twitter, and I suspect that linking accounts to phone numbers would dramatically reduce that. On the other hand, I'm not sure I want Twitter (et. al.) knowing my phone number.
- pknopf 8y agoI like it. I've grown suspicious with many accounts on Twitter. Maybe I can learn to trust more.
- zipperhead 8y agoI agree. I would rather pay them some fee. But they don't seem to want to monetize their service via user fees.
- komali2 8y agoOh my god, paid Twitter would be amazing. Well, then again, something awful was a paid forum iirc, and it was still a den of villainy.
- criddell 8y agoBut on Something Awful, it was a feature, not a problem.
- jordanwallwork 8y agoSeems like it would make a lot of sense for them to offer both options; either would discourage bots, and you'd give people the choice whether to go the free route or the privacy-conscious route
- ahkonow 8y agoAnything tied to a phone number is inherently insecure, these things are becoming like SSNs but even more problematic. I haven't had a true phone number in a couple years, but I guess if I ever need to create a new twitter account I will need to get one?
- i6tjvo 8y agoI'm sure it's not all, but just some, depending on your IP address and some other factors.
- vengefulduck 8y agoThe link seems down: http://archive.is/tj3X7 http://archive.is/tj3X7
- Kenji 8y agoHug of death: https://web.archive.org/web/20190325223131/https://sucky.ninja/blog/twitter-locks-all-new-user-account-in-order-to-force-them-to-give-up-their-phone-numbers https://web.archive.org/web/20190325223131/https://sucky.nin...
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- puttycat 8y agoHandy tip: buy the cheapest pre-charged SIM and use it for this kind of verifications.
- mirimir 8y agoThat still allows geolocation. But one can lease hosted SIMs. Actual SIMs in server farms. So they're "real" mobile numbers. Just not located where you are.
- xfitm3 8y agoI tried to find a hosted sim provider - zero results. Can you provide a link?
- mirimir 8y agohttps://speedyverify.com/ https://speedyverify.com/
- gruez 8y ago>That still allows geolocation. I doubt twitter is going to get your cell tower location just from your phone number. Sure, the cell provider has it and is probably keeping it around, but unless you attract significant attention to yourself (eg. bomb threat), it's not going to be disclosed. If you're really paranoid you can use it a few blocks away from your usual location.
- inapis 8y agoUm wasn’t there a case where one of the big 3 providers in US was selling real time location data?
- gruez 8y agoThe 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.
- daybreak 8y agoI 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 account started working again. For anyone else with this issue, try: https://help.twitter.com/forms/signin https://help.twitter.com/forms/signin
- dx87 8y agoI 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.
- brianpgordon 8y agoThe exact same thing happened to me a few months ago.
- alexbecker 8y agoAlso happened to me. I ended up giving them a Google Voice #.
- jdreyfuss 8y agoIf you contact support and say you don't have a phone number, they unblock your account as well. That worked for me.
- baroffoos 8y agoI wonder how anyone actually uses twitter because I constantly get messages that I am rate limited/blocked and when I signed up for an account it was quickly locked when I had posted nothing. Its like they actively want no one to use it.
- Evidlo 8y ago
- _jomo 8y agoThey 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 a couple days at least. I assume this is on purpose to make it cumbersome for spammers. They always reply with the same boilerplate, but the account will be unlocked: Your account is now unlocked, and we’re sorry for the inconvenience. Twitter has automated systems that find and remove automated spam accounts and it looks like your account got caught up in one of these spam groups by mistake. This sometimes happens when an account exhibits automated behavior in violation of the Twitter Rules (https://twitter.com/rules). Again, we apologize for the inconvenience. Please do not respond to this email as replies will not be monitored.
- numbsafari 8y agoWhen 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.
- marcosdumay 8y agoYeah, 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.
- munk-a 8y agoThis 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.
- Not_a_pizza 8y agoWell, at least you can still more or less get burner phones, right? Still, what troubles me more is that most terrorist attacks that are publicized will go completely uncensored on Twitter, but if a conservative voice lets out a peep of the slightest offense, instant ban. 1984 was not a playbook, but Silicon Valley loves it too much to drop it any time soon.
- sasasassy 8y agoGood, it's a terrible service so I support any terrible practices they choose to support in speeding towards their demise. It's always been just a platform for the self entitled (verified profiles) to spread their gospel to the masses.
- mythz 8y agoI'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.
- 14 8y agoI 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.
- samename 8y agoThis almost sounds like something too good to be true. Big companies like Twitter and Facebook wouldn't want to use this service because they want to collect the data. This company would need to charge websites for the service, otherwise their only alternative is to sell their user's data or advertise, which leaves us right where we already are. Of course there may be other ways for such a service to survive, but those are my initial thoughts about seeing something like this happen. I would love for something like this to exist, though
- awad 8y agoI take the opposite view...something like this seems rather viable as a business that companies would gladly pay money for but it also basically sounds like another Equifax/Experian/Transunion fiasco waiting to happen. The only logical thing I can thing of is a consortium of the big telcos creating a shared database and service that companies could tap into.
- tw1010 8y agoGuess that means old legacy bot accounts just got a whole lot more valuable.
- deogeo 8y agoIt's understandable they might require a phone number to keep down spam. It's less understandable they'd lie to new users on the reasons their account was blocked. We can't expect even the smallest scraps of honesty from corporations anymore.
- jrockway 8y agoIt is understandable why they'd lie. If the error message was something like, "your request was blocked because you've included HTTP headers in the order [x-foo, x-bar], which is the header ordering in 99.9% of spam tweets", they would just change their agent's header order instead of no longer spending spam. I am not sure people realize what a high percentage of users of "free" services are spam bots of some sort. Sit around in the average Twitch channel and you'll see a flood of spam from similarly-named accounts every so often. They get around the filters because Twitch tells you why you're filtered. "This room is in followers only mode", so they follow the stream they want to spam a few days/weeks in advance. "This word is not allowed by the spam filters", so they change one letter and continue spamming that word. Etc., etc. It sucks for normal users caught up in spam filters, but it's an enormous problem that there is no easy solution to.
- deogeo 8y agoYou 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.
- vkou 8y agoI'd find anyone creating a Twitter account in 2019 to be somewhat suspect.
- hombre_fatal 8y agoNew people are born every day.
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- banana_giraffe 8y agoThe 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 can't do. Phone numbers are the an option for that, and it not doubt helps block other cases Twitter wants to block as well.
- munk-a 8y agoRight now that may be the case but, I'm curious if this might cause some small nation with an international code to succumb to the massive amounts of money spammers will start offering for large banks of phone numbers... Looking at you British India Ocean Territories...
- banana_giraffe 8y agoI'm sure you're right. I honestly wouldn't be surprised to learn it's already started. The escalating warfare will continue. I'm not sure where it'll go from here, but I'm sure it won't be fun for people that value privacy.
- jonas21 8y agoOnce they noticed, they'd probably disallow that country code for verification. And if legitimate users from that country started complaining, I feel like "maybe you should ask your government to stop selling you out" would be a perfectly reasonable response.
- ALittleLight 8y agoWhy not just captchas and a classifier looking for bots in the sign up process? That, plus better detection and removal of bots seems like a "good enough" option that wouldn't inconvenience real users.
- j16sdiz 8y ago
- the8472 8y agoIs that even GDPR-compliant?
- sadris 8y agoTwitter is a US corporation.
- aboutruby 8y agoI guess the price of old accounts is going up a bit.
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- tyingq 8y agoI 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?
- ridgewell 8y agoAre 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.
- tyingq 8y agoStock 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.
- kevin_thibedeau 8y agoOpen the links in desktop mode and see if the errors go away.
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- jaifraic 8y agoI have the same problem. I don't really use twitter, but sometimes I get a link to there from Reddit or HN. Twitter never works on the first try with Firefox or Chrome on Android. Often a refresh helps, but sometimes it does not work at all. I too think it is done intentionally to get users to install the app. I can't think of a reason this is a simple bug. But the again... Hanlon's razor.
- propogandist 8y ago
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- inopinatus 8y agoWe'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.
- munk-a 8y agoWe're in a similar sort of space with regards to shifting emails and a lack of easy account recovery. I have educated my family on password managers and I really would appreciate (it's beyond my means) someone putting some serious effort into getting a larger proportion of the population onto using password management software - along with a nice free cloud based option. There is so little data involved in these sorts of things that it's got to be pretty much incidental to offer free storage in a safe encrypted manner.
- lightedman 8y ago"Turns out that phone numbers, whilst also subject to flux, have better long-term congruence to identity" That isn't what I saw in the Verizon store today while I was disputing a charge on my bill ($10 trade-in on an account that never had a trade-in device at all?) Many people were changing their numbers. To boot, I'm sure there are plenty of burner phones in use out there, I have six of my own with plenty of rollover minutes/texts.
- mbesto 8y ago> 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. What service do you offer? Because I would never give a company where I wasn't paying for the service my phone number. How do you guarantee you won't misuse it or have ample protections in case of a breach?
- apo 8y agoLinking pseudonyms from two different networks (in this case, Twitter and the phone system) together is a classic and serious privacy leak. It's far from clear exactly what information Twitter, in its longtime effort to combat spam, has already collected on its users. Throwing a phone number into the mix expands to range of activities that can be unambiguously tied to the same individual. Given that Twitter certainly knows IP addresses of its users, it's trivial to do things like link site visits directly to an individual answering the phone number. Unfortunately, most people simply don't understand the implications of any of this. They don't understand what an entity, "authorized" or not can do with this kind of data. They are far too trusting of governments and other powerful entities to do the right thing. They have not been paying attention to the steady erosion of civil liberties around the world and can't conceive of, for example, ever ending up in prison for some lame post they made 10 years ago.
- anigbrowl 8y agoTwitter 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.
- syshum 8y ago>> 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 "verification" scheme do little to curb actual abuse, and in many cases shuts out moderate voices Twitter is already quickly heading off a cliff where 2 political extremes are left yelling past each other (not actually communicating or discussing anything), and this policy will do nothing to change that //disclosure, I have never, and will never have a twitter account
- 8y ago
- avodonosov 8y agoThat's fair. If you don't like it - go away.
- duluca 8y ago100%
- subway 8y agoI don't like this for today's Twitter, but it is mildly interesting to consider that once upon a time Twitter's main ui was SMS based.
- donretag 8y agoIt also happened to me. Signed up using an Outlook webmail account, residential IP, Firefox with Incognito Mode and Ghostery. Once your account is disabled, the ability to delete (oops, I meant deactivate) your account is gone. I emailed support to delete my account since I am now unable to do so, and instead they re-enabled the account.
- lightedman 8y agoYou've done what you can to terminate the business relationship. Any further contact from them is CAN-SPAM territory and you should get a lawyer.
- miohtama 8y agoHere is a Google research paper on how adding the phone number verification will affect the cost of bot user account on black markets: static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en/us/pubs/archive/43134.pdf
- sparkie 8y agoWhat it doesn't include: The cost of the users you will lose because you have a dog shit user experience blocking people before they even get to sample your service.
- miohtama 8y agoAn excellent point. Do you know any studies that would a price tag on this?
- sparkie 8y agoYou can't put a price on it. Imagine, for example, if when Donald Trump was signing up for Twitter, he got irked off and decided to use a different platform instead. That's potentially 60M people using your competitor. Poor user experience can decide the entire success or failure of your service or product. People generally have too much tolerance because they've been programmed to accept bad user experience as normal. Services which require you to confirm an email are the typical example. Imagine a door salesman came to your door, pitched you a product, but before you discussed any price or subscription, they ask "please can you go and get a shovel while I take a dump on your doorstep?" Well, that's the kind of experience people get online.
- smhenderson 8y agoWhen I signed up for Twitter it was so I could post short messages from my phone that hopefully my friends and family would see and perhaps some small number of other, random users. You’re phone was your ID essentially. I guess we’ve come full circle.
- packet_nerd 8y agoMy wife and I cancelled our phone services a while back to save money since we rarely if ever have to call anyone and just use messaging to keep in touch with each other and friends. What are people like us supposed to do? I do have a Google voice number, but I noticed one or two places recently that won't accept that anymore.
- H1Supreme 8y ago> 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.
- rdbell 8y agoCraigslist is one recent example that I came across.
- throwaway5r09 8y agoAnother is Credit Karma. And others have said Zelle no longer allows it. Would love if someone made a list so those that have moved to VoIP wouldn’t need to waste time.
- echelon 8y agoTinder won't accept Google Voice numbers. That kept me off their platform for years.
- packet_nerd 8y agoI don't remember honestly, but I was looking for a site to do my taxes when I saw the last one. I didn't finish signing up. It mentioned not supporting "voice over IP" numbers, or something to that effect. I wish I'd taken a screenshot.
- eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y agoIt’s happened to me a few times with my Gvoice number. Which is really annoying because this is why I use it. It usually gives no specific information about why it failed, but then I use my main mobile number and it works fine.
- tictok4 8y agoMe too! Signed up yesterday and right away got an email saying my account was locked because I violated their rules. Filled out a ticket saying I don't want to give my phone number and they replied with boilerplate message saying to follow these easy steps - provide your phone number.
- est31 8y agoThe 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 number and the associated accounts show up... even though the number was supposed to be only for two factor auth. Your only choice as individual user is to leave the platform.
- LeifCarrotson 8y ago> 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.
- ams6110 8y agoThis is why you should block ads and trackers even if you're not a Facebook user. I have blocked all their domains in my hosts file also.
- quakeguy 8y agoWould you mind sharing the hosts file for blocking FB and all of their domains? I've done this too in the past, but my list seems outdated for a while now.
- ArtDev 8y agoPerhaps Twitter is following Facebook which has been deceptive harvesting phone numbers under the guise of "security" for years now. https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/27/yes-facebook-is-using-your-2fa-phone-number-to-target-you-with-ads/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/27/yes-facebook-is-using-your...
- okko12 8y agoI think a better solution is : When user post a tweet. She/He can choose whether this post require only authorized user can reply/retweet
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- OrgNet 8y agoI have a few legacy twitter accounts for sale... $50 each
- sneak 8y agoYou also can’t reuse the phone number across different accounts, so I am locked out of about ten of my usernames (locked for “suspicious activity” even though they have been idle for a year or more) unless I give Burner or someone else a ton of money. It sucks.
- duluca 8y agoA 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.
- livueta 8y agoWell, there are a variety of good reasons why real-name policies aren't always the best idea. The "authentic real self" approach works okay if you've got the social and political capital to weather any negative consequences of your statements being directly associated with your real identity, but that's not true for many/most(?) participants in our democracy. For example: * 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. --- [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/09/facebooks-real-name-policy-can-cause-real-world-harm-lgbtq-community https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/09/facebooks-real-name-po... [2] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/07/case-pseudonyms https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/07/case-pseudonyms
- interwho 8y agoThey also aren't allowing "throwaway" VoIP numbers, so you can't even mask your main phone number - I tried signing up with both a Twilio number and a TextNow number and both failed with a "This number is not supported" error. I ended up opening a support ticket and they allowed me to bypass that requirement only after I explained that I don't have a traditional phone number.
- newnewpdro 8y agoTo add insult to injury, not only do they lock your account almost immediately after you've created it without a phone number - unless you managed to change its settings to not spam your email address you will now be locked out of changing the setting and they will send you spam nearly every day. Attempting to stop the spam through the in-email link just brings you back to the "locked account give us a phone number" flow. Twitter is trash.
- hsnewman 8y agoSo what your saying is that after doing so much damage to the USA democracy, they are using a poor form of 2 factor authentication? I'm not impressed.
- lucisferre 8y agoProbably part of their strategy to abandon the web and move back to their SMS roots.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- gustavmarwin 8y agosmsprivacy.org - it's not cheap but if you need it, it's working great.
- Crontab 8y ago> Twitter forces all new users to enter a valid phone number Fuck. That.
- germainelol 8y agoThere may be negatives to this, but if you listen to any recent talks with Jack Dorsey, he is genuinely concerned about combating the amount of fake accounts on Twitter. Of course, it's both a moral issue and a business issue but that's beyond the point. If giving my phone number to Twitter means it can have an ever so slight positive impact on the amount of trolls and fake accounts on Twitter, then it's a good thing to me... However, we have seen with Facebook that giving your phone number doesn't necessarily work in combating trolls, so I'd be interested in how exactly they will use it.
- vonuebelgarten 8y agoWhy the hell aren't we migrating to the Fediverse (aka Mastodon) en masse ?
- Kbye 8y agoHere is my advice. NEVER EVER take advice from Indian managers. Almost all are terrible and have zero personality whatsoever. Almost all hire their own kind. South Indians are expert with this mindset (long and ugly names) Indians have obsequious mindset and are driven by jealousy, envy, and resentment. I know this comment won't last long or is not framed to be politically correct. But, that's the truth. There are good Indian managers, but those are far and few within. Don't believe me? Look at any online forum and see comments posted. This site features two Indian managers. 9 out 10 chance both are terrible. Also, if you want to work for woman managers, work for ones above 45-50 at least. They are more mature and won't jeopardize your career. Asian woman managers (Indians too) are big no-no. You are welcome!
- MichaelBosworth 8y agoLe sigh. This sort of thing is why I made phitbone.com
- manfredo 8y agoI'm seeing conspicuous parallels with YikYak. YikYak was facing an abusive userbase that proved difficult to moderate or restrain. Then they introduced the phone number requirement which did seem to reduce abuse. But of course YikYak died not so long after. Granted, Twitter is in a very different position than YikYak. Curbing user growth in order to afford a better experience for the existing users is likely a good tradeoff.
- mediocrejoker 8y agoIs it just me or is adding a phone number required to enable other 2FA methods like U2F?
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- tehjoker 8y agoJust a reminder that tech companies will do anything to make more certain predictions for the sake of an ever expanding circle of clients: https://theintercept.com/2019/02/02/shoshana-zuboff-age-of-surveillance-capitalism/ https://theintercept.com/2019/02/02/shoshana-zuboff-age-of-s...
- systematical 8y agoThis 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.
- trymas 8y agoIt's worse in FB. "We detected suspicious behaviour in your account. Please send a copy of your ID to prove your identity. We promise we'll delete the image of your ID within 30 days." [0] Yeah, right! They'll delete the image, but will still have the data... So now I have a FB account I would like to delete, but cannot, because I cannot log into it. Should I just believe in GDPR, unblock my account and request for total deletion of data about me? [0] Obviously not a citation. Just paraphrasing
- ccnafr 8y agoTwitter has done this for years.
- justforfunhere 8y agoGoing by the number of Spam SMSs I get, I know that my mobile number is already out there in hundreds of databases. I don't get this "I won't give my number" thing. Your number is already out there and is being sold as part of a list all the time.
- krageon 8y agoI know for a fact some people had the wherewithal to not disclose their phone number to everyone who asked and therefore do not have your particular breed of problems. Your outright dismissal of their right to privacy is therefore tenuous at best, as it's founded on a premise that is untrue.
- kuschku 8y agoSome of us don’t get any spam SMS, never have gotten any, and want to keep it that way.
- Merkur 8y agoYour phone nummer is global unique id of your person. Even more as many nations require you register the phone number with personal informations.
- xtat 8y agohttps://smsprivacy.org/ https://smsprivacy.org/
- pdkl95 8y agoRequiring a phone number causes problems and, depending on the situation, is easily bypassed by a determined bot author. [see other comments in this thread] It is also ineffective at preventing people from posting rude, misguided, or hateful comments (people post terrible crap under their own name on Twitter/etc all the time). Bad actors causing problems on a globally-accessible platform is not a new problem. Multiplayer games from MUDs to the modern MMORPG have several decades of experience with the problem[1]. Most attempts at fixing the problem don't work, because they are don't guarantee the bad actor has to pay what they perceive to be a large cost. Unless the incentives are fixed, bad actors will continue to be a problem. (I'm summarizing; for as much better explanation, see Raph Koster's talk[1]) Cost does not mean money or anything that is widely available (like a phone number). Credit card numbers are trivial to change, and phone numbers are cheap. The cost to the potential bad actor has to be something they don't want to pay. In an MMORPG, deleting the high-level character that someone spent 20+ hours leveling up hurts a lot more than having to provide a (potentially new) phone or credit card number. To make a serious punishment like character deletion legitimate, there needs to be some sort of publicly visible due process of law involved before it can be used. That means being informed of the specific accusations instead of Google-style banning for unspecified TOS violations. That means a legitimate appeals process that doesn't simply send appeals to /dev/null or handed to the accuser to judge if the appeal is legitimate (like YouTube's content_id (not DMCA) takedowns). How could this work on something like Twitter? Banning a troll only forces them to make a new account (a minor expense). Hiding all of their comments for a while (or eventually deleting them if the bad behavior continues) denies the troll the fruits of their misbehavior. Of course, bots and bad actors is only part of the reason Twitter wants a phone number. Without a Ulysses pact[2] binding their future behavior, Twitter is free to continue acting as a surveillance capitalist[3]. [1] https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1024060/Still-Logged-In-What-AR https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1024060/Still-Logged-In-What-A... (everybody developing anything involved (directly or indirectly) with the internet should watch this talk) [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlN6wjeCJYk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlN6wjeCJYk ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_pact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_pact ) [3] http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/02/shoshana-zuboff-q-and-a-the-age-of-surveillance-capital.html http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/02/shoshana-zuboff-q-and...
- neiman 8y agoAm I the only person here who sees it as a problem since I don't have a phone number?
- phreack 8y agoI actually had to borrow a phone number to create an account and use Twitter in an emergency, since it was the only channel where a service provider would respond to messages. The whole situation was mind boggling.
- jokoon 8y agoI logged on twitter 3 days ago, I almost never log in, it seems my account was disabled.
- david_f 8y agoCreated a new account yesterday (from Australia) and had the option for either email or phone number (went with email). Haven't since been asked for a phone number. Disclosure (haven't read the article, just responding to the title 'Twitter forces all new users to enter a valid phone number')
- jak92 8y agoYou'll probably be locked out shortly if you haven't yet.
- TheLuddite 8y agoGood, they should push this to all old account retroactively as well.
- nemoniac 8y agoCould it be argued that this is in contravention of the GDPR? Can Twitter demonstrate that it's necessary for them too have a phone number to provide their service?
- PinguTS 8y agoThey are requiring a mobile phone number for some time now even when not on VPN, TOR and alike. This is very worrying that more and more services are requiring a mobile number, especially for services that are used with business background. That means, in your business you need to have a business mobile. You need to track who registered with what phone number and so on. Email accounts are much easier to manage. But mobile numbers is a big problem, especially when employees leave and mobiles get deactivated.
- Komodoro 8y agoIts a bit weird complaining about a platform asking for your phone number when in the past tweeter worked only via sms. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter#Format https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter#Format Lucky those that created their accounts early on. Forcing us to put more data then what is needed should be banned from any social platform. I really don't get any of this eager race to collect all personal data possible. Google is already on to us with Chrome and Android. If people were really afraid of this they wouldn't even buy phones, do phone calls (from land line) or even send a personal registered mail (it could be violated). Hell, trust no one with your secrets. Don't even write it in a diary, someone may reconstruct it even after you burn it to ashes (I see a lot of CSI). Still good to be updated on this.
- ehnto 8y agoI once signed up for an account and didn't give a phone number. Everything was fine and I filled out my profile. Later that day my account was restricted for "suspicious activity" ( I hadn't done anything except fill in the bio ) and the only way to reinstate it was to verify my account with a phone number. Now, I am not saying it was a nefarious way to get my phone number. It's more likely a side effect of processes designed over time by many people. But if I were trying to sneakily require someone to give me a phone number without explicitly saying so, that is how I would do it.
- ibejoeb 8y agoIt was only months ago that Lime and Bird were accused of racism and other discriminatory behavior due to the requirement that users have mobile phones to unlock the scooters. It was enough for them to develop cash-based access systems. Why is it acceptable for Twitter? Should I not be allowed to sign up on a public terminal and tweet without a mobile phone?
- feketegy 8y agoThis is what I don't get. Twitter is a company, a social network which has its own internal rules. When you sign up, you accept the terms & conditions, now which requires that you have a valid phone number to use the platform. If this is not convenient for you, why should Twitter change? Why not just move on to other services? To me it seems like that people want to be part of the "community" and sign up on the platform, but still dictate their own rules. Why would Twitter consider such users?
- ibejoeb 8y agoThat's essentially the question I'm asking. The outrage seems arbitrary. Is it just that Twitter has been around for over a decade and Lime, e.g., is new? It seems reasonable to me that Twitter can require a phone. Why doesn't that extend to other entities?
- frankzen 8y agoShould be subtitled "Twitter prepares to lose more than half of its users"...
- davidgrenier 8y agoIt should say... mobile phone as I'm sure this won't work with my landline.
- troxwalt 8y agoWhen they first started, tweets were sent from your own phone as an SMS, weren't they?
- zackkitzmiller 8y agoYup. Twttr was basically SMS only.
- commandlinefan 8y agoThis is great news, I've been waiting for an alternative to Twitter to take over its dominance.
- Swaglord333 8y agoLol don't use Twitter
- bob_theslob646 8y agoIs there any other way to do long-term verification?
- throwawaymanbot 8y agooh no, those poor russian bots...