Ran into this with Google docs. Everyone who does any collaboration online uses Google Docs, but I don’t want to give a random internet stranger I met on a creative writing subreddit my google account name, which for employability reasons is my IRL name. So I try making an alt account, but the phone thing rears its ugly head again. Guess I’ll never improve my creative writing then. Yeah it would be nice if someone spun up a NextCloud server, but good luck convincing a bunch of non techies of the virtues of self hosting.

And yet again, I tried setting up a nodeBB instance, but when it came time to get email notifications up and running, I had to choose a bulk email provider, and they required my phone number. Seems companies are getting wise to the fact it’s much easier to create an email account vs a phone number, so in order to pin you down as an advertising target actual human they require a phone number.

Needless account creation to play a primarily single player game that I already bought through an online store like Steam or Nintendo eShop is also really aggravating. Y’all already know I bought your game fair and square. I’m already playing it on a platform with its own DRM. Why are you punishing me for having a lawful good alignment? Valve figured this out decades ago. Piracy is a service problem.