[epoch1970]

When I last tried to sign up, they requested a phone number, I assume as some sort of an attempt to make it harder for spammers to sign up. I don't think they have any legitimate reason for that sort of information, so I didn't provide it. I don't remember the specifics, but either I couldn't finish creating the account, or it was created and then automatically locked/suspended a few minutes later. The end result was that I couldn't sign up and use the service in any meaningful way.

I don't know if that's still the case or not. After that rather awful experience trying to sign up, I've lost all interest in trying again.

I'm not surprised they're having trouble growing when they impede the ability of people to sign up! There's no reason for their signup process to need anything more than a username and a password. They don't need my email address. They surely don't need my phone number or any other information about me.

[mschuster91]

> There's no reason for their signup process to need anything more than a username and a password. They don't need my email address.

They do (and any service basically). You don't want to run a large-scale service without having some way for your users to self-reset their passwords.

> They surely don't need my phone number or any other information about me.

That requirement is recent and I believe comes from law enforcement / politicians as they want to be able to track "hate speech" (that's the official speech, but rather I believe it's about dissidents, YPG supporters etc) to real persons. Many left-wing German accounts had them frozen until entering a phone number, for example. Facebook is easier because many people use their real name and photographs or other personal details from which law enforcement can identify them.

[epoch1970]

> They do (and any service basically). You don't want to run a large-scale service without having some way for your users to self-reset their passwords.

I don't buy that. There are other similar services that allow an email address to optionally be provided later, for password-resetting purposes. I believe reddit is like that, as is this site.

This site gives me a "Please put a valid address in the email field, or we won't be able to send you a new password if you forget yours." message when I view my preferences, for example.

I don't buy your phone number claim, either. There are many other services out there, including ones that very likely have a presence in a country like Germany, that support user-posted content but that don't require a phone number to sign up.

[xxpor]

Anon users are the worst part of twitter. They should be completely banned. HN doesn't have this problem because it's sufficiently niche, but the Nazi trolls and other assorted idiots have to be dealt with on twitter.