Hacker News Reader

Comment by gojomo | Hacker News Reader

New accounts without an associated phone number tend to face a lock & challenge, for "suspicious activity" (even if they've never posted), which can only be reversed by adding a phone number.

So, Twitter is de facto requiring phone numbers on many more accounts than the initial sign-up flow might indicate – to the detriment of user privacy, & increasing the damage of compromises like this one.

View on HN

Note that activities which are potentially suspicious aren't just about posting, it includes following people, because that makes their follower count go up, and the whole point of displaying that count is most people want to appear popular - and so of course people create bogus followers.

I agree that Twitter using this to get people to give them PII those don't want Twitter to have, especially when Twitter aren't a good custodian of that PII is terrible, but it's not as though Twitter's other option (anybody can mint a thousand bogus Twitter followers with no pushback from Twitter) looks great either.

> I agree that Twitter using this to get people to give them PII those don't want Twitter to have, especially when Twitter aren't a good custodian of that PII is terrible, but it's not as though Twitter's other option (anybody can mint a thousand bogus Twitter followers with no pushback from Twitter) looks great either.

Third option: don't display follower counts.

Hiding counts makes it hard to identify imposter accounts and bots. Users need to be able to see account age and counts at a minimum.

I never used twitter until last year when I made an account. They flagged me for following 5 people and liking some posts, locked me out, and notified me that any attempts to send support a request would be ignored. I can’t even log in or contact anyone to delete the account.

I guess the future is to be given the middle finger so eagerly by bad ai all the time

If using the application for its intended purpose makes your account seem not-human, just who or what did they design the application for?

For entities whose behavior fit their model, it's called negative selection[1], a mandatory attribute of emerging dictatorship.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_selection_(politics)

Yes, Twitter now considers everything "suspicious", including the minimal steps required to use Twitter as a logged-in account at all, like "following people" (even just a few).

And thus, Twitter more-or-less requires phone numbers from everyone. This increases the risk that Twitter's users will be "doxxed" – and even, when those users anger certain large violent organizations, the risk they'll be assassinated.

My account (created without entering a phone number) was locked immediately after logging in the first time, from the same IP I signed up with, without performing any actions. This was over 12 months ago.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com