Hacker News Reader

Comment by snisarenko | Hacker News Reader

Ok .... I am doing my best here, and assuming this is a comment in good faith, and not a troll post (following HN guidelines and all).

So, you are trying to join a federated social network. But, you feel that providing an email (literally the first federated social network on the internet) is a burden ? And you feel this is a burden because you don't want to give up a phone number to get an email account.

I believe protonmail has a free tier, and doesn't ask for a phone number:

https://protonmail.com/signup

And you can also pay for the premium tier with bitcoin.

https://protonmail.com/support/knowledge-base/paying-with-bi...

So hopefully that gets you out of a pickle where you want to have an email while maximizing privacy.

View on HN

So first,why would what I said be a trollpost? Because you disagree?

Second, protonmail requires a phone or credit card to sign up(wasn't the case before). You can pay for protonmail using btc and i was lucky to have an account before their sms verification requirement but I don't wish to use that address.

Third, why the hell do I need an email address to join any service? I can list many reasons why I don't want to use email ,privacy being only one small reason. Let go of email and sms,please! I emplore you, so much is at stake! You can use email all you want but free your users from needing it.

Why do I need an email for mastodon? Why???? It's literally a communication platform you can send me messages on? You can make a backup email (or backup mastodon account) for recovery although there are more secure options? Why do you insist on demanding people depend on a technology from the early 1980s to use new technology today? Why do I need burner phones and bitcoin wallets fudned using cash to join a free federated service? I use to be able to join an irc network,forums or even email itself without everyone and their mother knowing my phone,address, work place,associates,demographic info,etc...

Why can't you give it a break?

Hey man, I didn't mean no offense. I don't disagree, I respect people who want privacy. It just seems like you are a person who takes their privacy "extra" seriously, and I just wasn't sure if it was a joke or not (most people on the internet have an email address). There is nothing wrong with people who go the next level of privacy, just don't encounter them very often so kudos to you on that front.

I understand your frustration from a privacy perspective. But I did not create mastodon. You may want to submit an issue on mastodon's github to ask for a non-email registration setting, and make your case why its important for privacy.

https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon

But I also want to say that you are an outlier of the average user on the internet (most of whom have an e-mail address). I am sure that the guy who created mastodon, didn't add e-mail in the registration out of spite for privacy. He was following a common patter for registrations that works for 95% of people on the internet.

Going back to the discussion of creating anonymous email address. I didn't know that proton mail requires phone number (haven't used it before, just heard good things about it). I did not realize the state of email registrations across the web (haven't had create a new email account in a while). Your last option would be to just use those throw away email services, that generate a random email address, and let you receive some emails on that address.

Here is an example: https://temp-mail.org/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com