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Comment by wpietri | Hacker News Reader

Just to explain this a bit:

> to put URLs in the descriptions [...] Phone number "verification" is nasty

Spam is a huge problem for any large platform with free accounts, and there aren't a lot of good options to prevent it. One set of mitigations is around increasing the cost of an identity. Email addresses are infinite and free, but working phone numbers are limited and usually cost money. So gating spammer-desired activities on phone numbers makes sense from their perspective. They could get a similar effect by requiring a credit card number, but people hate that even more.

If you'd like to work around this, I'd suggest getting another number for just this. Google Voice will give you one for free, and the Burner app will do it for $5/month if you sign up via web. Or in my case, my ISP gives me a free landline number with my internet service, which is great for this sort of thing.

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> Email addresses are infinite and free, but working phone numbers are limited and usually cost money.

In many parts of the world, getting a phone number requires recording your government ID with the carrier (and burners are illegal, though usually for the carrier not the consumer), so the calculus then becomes “to prove you’re not a spammer, give up everything about your identity that was or ever will be known”. Which, no.

(There’s a reason why Russian democracy activists are divided between a “use Signal, everybody else is dodgy as all get out” camp and a “fuck no, don’t use Signal, doxxing you will be slipping $20 to a random SIM card salesman” camp. But parts of Western Europe are the same, and some are even ahead on e.g. unavailability of anonymous stored-value cards for transport or mandating testimony against yourself wrt encrypted storage.)

Four points:

1. Despite this, spam thrives on Google.

2. What happened to using AI to fight spam? Trained and intelligent humans can discern spam without knowing identity.

3. This still won’t prevent other email providers sending spam to Gmail.

4. Safety is often used as justification for more $$$.

That 5th ammendment is great isn't it. I wish we had it.

This is somewhat of a bullshit argument. Not on your part! But on those who typically use it as justification.

Because there are two independent components to such a system: {increase cost of identity} + {protect privacy of identity}

When it's offered/justified to combat spam... the implication is that the solution will deliver both promises.

In reality, the first (concept of identity) gets built, marketing/sales realizes they can abuse the hell out of it for their ends, the second (privacy protection) gets overruled at the VP/C* level, and any privacy protections are quietly never implemented.

This happens again. And again. And again.

Google is probably the best case ethical scenario here, in regards to having standards around privacy data stewardship, and even they abuse it frequently when the profit is too large to ignore.

The only reasonable takeaway is that any system that permits mass tracking is too dangerous to privacy to allow to exist, and all should be opposed.

Or, as GDPR does, render companies liable for omissions from a privacy perspective.

Services that require a phone number often will not accept a VOIP or a POTS landline phone number, only mobile numbers with txt capabilities.

They also often don't even support MVNOs. E.g. Blizzard not supporting Cricket numbers for account registration

Advertising and tracking a bigger problems than spam IMO.

The most ridiculous part of this phone-verification BS is that many companies (e.g. Twitter, Discord) let you create an account without it but will then demand a number at some point later. This only hurts real users because spammers can just switch IPs and create a new account that they can use for a while.

> Google Voice will give you one for free

And what information do you have to give Google for that number so that you can avoid giving your phone number to Google?

You're ignoring the fact that this person has had a youtube account since 2006. That should count for something.

That is another possible mitigation, but is also not a perfect one. Valuing old accounts increases the incentive to steal old accounts and to create sleeper spam accounts that you let age until you're past the bar.

Ignoring the good in pursuit of the perfect is a cause of many ills. Consider the gross loss of trust when someone who has had an account for 16 years, almost since the establishment of the platform, is treated with suspicion. Businesses owe some accountability to their customers, including free users whose data they sell.

Jumping through hops like this is a bad idea. If you disagree with their business practices don’t use them.

Beyond the moral argument, it’s easy to be in a situation where you get locked out because you no longer have access to a temporary phone number etc.

I get your point, but I have to pick my battles. I disagree with quite a lot of business practices. If I wanted ethical purity under capitalism, in short order I'd be subsistence farming and living the grim life of a preindustrial peasant. Which would be then giving up any power I might have to change the system. That strikes me as even less ethical, however pure it might be.

Heck, if I wanted ethical purity, I wouldn't be here contributing free content to YC. But I think the net good outweighs the net harm, so here I am.

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