[aluminussoma]

Because they respect your privacy and don't feel the need to plaster your comment in every search engine?

[pseudalopex]

Requiring my phone number does not respect my privacy. Reddit users can create as many identities as they wish.

[micromacrofoot]

oh wow are we now in the "finding information is bad actually" phase of the internet?

[ninth_ant]

Mastodon believes this and willfully denies search functionality. Tech built to search Mastodon (https://fedsearch.io/) was aggressively decried as violating privacy and such.

So yes, there is certainly at least a vocal subset of people who believe that "finding information is bad actually" and deliberately building tech along those lines.