Honestly, after running into the phone number requirement it's gonna be hard to get back my trust.
You required the phone number after you got all my account details. You wouldn't let me remove my account without first giving you my phone number. When I contacted your support to get you to delete my data, a simple back and forth like "you're gonna lose all your data!" and "I don't have any data" made them completely fail the Turing test. It's clear they don't really read what I was writing, they're just responding to whatever the first thought is that comes to their head.
I don't know if they're overworked, underpaid, or have quotas. Either way, none of the experience of trying to join an OSS development channel on Discord are in any way conductive towards trust. I mean, I couldn't even copy and paste the phone number requirement error message.
So let's say that in the future you got this alternative method deployed but then, what happens with already acquired phone numbers? Will you remove it once this method will be running nicely? Or you'll keep phone numbers giving a promise you won't use it to anything naughty and users will have choice to either keep it for "security purposes", or they will have ability to remove it by themselves directly from the client or by going the longer way, asking support to remove it from account data? Can you tell which solutions were considered so far?
Also, not sure if you're aware there but in some countries it's no longer possible to use SIM card without registering it first under name and last name and that means, the state has a possibility to track your online presence.
If you give me the option to verify my account for 1$ or something like that instead, I'd much prefer and just use that and accept it as an alternative. If phone number is enforced as the only option, I find it hard to believe that spam is the only reason you want it and that the phone number won't be used for other things (in the future).
As has been said, there is sadly little reason to trust a company in that regard. Usages of user data are always expanded upon, official (or unofficial) promises from companys aren't worth anything, and leaks also happen all the time.
Provide a specific commitment. What methods, and when will they become available? "We're working on it" is worthless and when I'm told this I assume I am being blown off.
You required the phone number after you got all my account details. You wouldn't let me remove my account without first giving you my phone number. When I contacted your support to get you to delete my data, a simple back and forth like "you're gonna lose all your data!" and "I don't have any data" made them completely fail the Turing test. It's clear they don't really read what I was writing, they're just responding to whatever the first thought is that comes to their head.
I don't know if they're overworked, underpaid, or have quotas. Either way, none of the experience of trying to join an OSS development channel on Discord are in any way conductive towards trust. I mean, I couldn't even copy and paste the phone number requirement error message.