>I'm saying that that is what the market is like right now and removing it causes people to see it as a downgrade. The market's only like that because there's

>I'm saying that that is what the market is like right now and removing it causes people to see it as a downgrade. The market's only like that because there's a lack of alternatives. 'The market' isn't an abstract entity that came into existence out of nowhere. Companies make the choice to provide only that option, people never chose this. Removing the ability to chat with people using a username and password is the downgrade, that existed long before SMS and phone verification and tying those services to what is essentially an epehemeral number not ever actually owned by you, but the company that provides it. There's plenty of places in the world where having a consistent phone number isn't really the norm. I've got friends i've saved multiple phone numbers for because they signed up to this or that messenger with different phone numbers. Phone numbers are useless as an identification method. I pointed this out in another comment, but because whatsapp and signal use this system, there are random people in my contacts list, whose profile pictures and status updates I can see, but I have no idea who they are because the people that used to have those phone numbers no longer have them and they were reassigned to someone else.