[lapcat]

> I believe this is a reasonable measure to increase the cost of new spam accounts.

You seem to be overlooking the bald-faced lie told by Meta/IG that someone's new account is violating "Community Guidelines" before they can even use it.

Moreover, it makes no sense that a phone number would be a "get out of jail free" card for violating Community Guidelines.

[saetaes]

> You seem to be overlooking the bald-faced lie told by Meta/IG that someone's new account is violating "Community Guidelines" before they can even use it.

I don't know about OP, but the the article they linked had a screenshot showing that the Community Guidelines they'd violated were around "account integrity". Looking at those[1], it seems plausible that OP and the article's author used something during account creation that triggered an integrity system, similar to what the parent was describing. Maybe they used a proxy/VPN, or something else that caused the robots to think that they were "Creat(ing) an account by scripted or other inauthentic means."

I don't think that big tech deserves a free pass on much, but to think they they're suspending accounts just to harvest phone numbers seems like it would be something they'd likely get into deep shit over: stock price drop, huge fines, CEO in front of Congress-type of thing. I doubt it would be worth it to them.

1. https://transparency.fb.com/policies/community-standards/acc...

[lapcat]

> the article they linked had a screenshot showing that the Community Guidelines they'd violated were around "account integrity". Looking at those[1], it seems plausible that OP and the article's author used something during account creation that triggered an integrity system, similar to what the parent was describing. Maybe they used a proxy/VPN, or something else that caused the robots to think that they were "Creat(ing) an account by scripted or other inauthentic means."

Compare my HN username to the domain name of the linked article. I am the author.

I did not use a proxy or VPN.

> to think they they're suspending accounts just to harvest phone numbers seems like it would be something they'd likely get into deep shit over: stock price drop, huge fines, CEO in front of Congress-type of thing. I doubt it would be worth it to them.

Apparently it was worth it to them:

https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/08/twitter-admits-it-used-two...

This is not a conspiracy theory, it's something that has actually happened.

[gurchik]

For what it's worth, I got the same "account integrity" explanation. Until proven otherwise I'm assuming that's the same canned response they always give. I did not use a proxy or a VPN, and I did not use an anonymous email address like a protonmail account or something similar.