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Comment by sdan | Hacker News Reader

In the recent past, I've seen Twitter harshly ban account I randomly make. Sometimes its weeks before they ask for a phone number and if you don't have a real number (iirc they check against VoIP) they won't unrestrict you. If you have the same IP as other account I think they also might auto restrict you.

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They banned my account for unnamed terms of use violations after my first post saying “well, I finally made a Twitter account.” Their support replied with “queries will not be responded to.” It was for the best

When they locked my freshly created account and didn't let me use it unless I gave them my phone number I mailed them and told them I would not do so for privacy reasons. My account was unlocked the next day.

Several years ago I tried to make a Twitter account. It got banned before I posted anything. I hadn't even subscribed to any users. I was going through the settings, and then \bam\, banned for being a bot, or some such nonsense. Nothing of value was lost.

Twitter aggressively tries to get phone numbers from new users - providing it is the main way to get unbanned in cases like this.

Unless you're my mother, or maybe if you're part of my immediate family, you're not getting my phone number.

American giant corporation with questionable ethics: hard no.

Yeah, I had to get a separate number just to please twitter's automation.

Their approach is somewhat understandable - stopping bots is a hard problem, phone number in theory represents a material cost and a hurdle to someone who wants to rapidly register thousands of new accounts.

Don't you have a burner phone/sim for these types of requests?

This is brought up every time this subject is discussed. Is a burner phone a normal thing that regular people have?

But no, I don't have a burner phone. I'm not going to buy a phone and a SIM just as some kind of non-solution to tech companies having a hard-on for invading peoples privacy.

I have an old phone (who doesn't) which I leave plugged in on my desk, with a £5 payg sim card.

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