[naturalauction]

>Get 5 friends to vouch for you

This approach is used by wechat, you can't make your own account and can only be invited by an existing user. I suspect that wechat has reached enough market penetration that this is now worth it.

[yieldcrv]

It was easy for me to find a Chinese national in San Francisco to verify me for WeChat

There are tricky requirements for Americans

[IshKebab]

Also Lobste.rs, which is why I am commenting here and not there.