[grpt]

Hope they fire the person that forced verified phone numbers on new accounts.

[malinens]

Verifying phone number is one of the last things which is still effective when fighting against bot registrations. Alternative is to ask money for registration.

Here is idea for hacker news crowd: make service which is a proxy for phone number validation: user needs to validate his phone number once in that app and any other 3rd-party service can ask this app for security code which confirms phone number ownership. We use something similar by offloading phone number confirmation via Telegram bot. Also this proxy service could optionally offload management of "bad" phone numbers used by spammers and add other protections

[grpt]

> Alternative is to ask money for registration.

I'm 100% ok with this. I have the choice of using a Visa/MC gift card I bought with cash. Same as I can do with Netflix. Better than linking a unique ID I use everywhere else.

I think what bugs me the most is that there's no direct need for the phone. It's reasonable to give my phone number to a doctor's office because I need to hear from them over the phone.

[bloopernova]

KeyBase could have been that service. I really wish they'd stayed focused on identification rather than crypto wallets and chat.

[zone411]

Nice idea, I hope somebody builds it. Signal just showed that they're spending $6 mil/year for verifying phone numbers.

[I_am_tiberius]

And the person who decided that the settings (disable usage for training data) and (save prompts) can't be individually controlled. Also that the default is that your data is used for training purposes. Both are clear indications that privacy was no importance to them.

[brianjking]

You can opt out of training and keep your history turned on in the privacy center. You fill out a form and indicate your country of residence.