Why do you need a phone number to sign up to social media platforms?

So, I tried to sign up to youtube today because I want to start a video channel starring my alter ego, “Golden Misborn”. Alas, I can not do that because they require you to have a phone number. I tried going the email route but that didn’t work either. They said that they needed to verify with a phone number which I think is bullshit. They claim to say they do it to cut off spam and people who abuse, which I think okay, people abusing the system but where does that go for people who want pure anonymity?

This isn’t just Google products, I also tried to sign up to a popular hosting image site, “imugr” to start hosting my images that I put on this very blog plus message boards I’m going to frequent. Alas, they want a phone number too, sigh. I guess anonymity is dead, at least when it comes to popular social media platforms it does.

I tried to use a burner app phone number but they are hip to that as well. So, I guess I’m stuck for the time being. I don’t have any money to go out and buy a “real” burner phone so I can use social media platforms. So I guess I’ll have to rely on alternatives for the time being which sucks because we all know that platforms like Youtube and Twitter is the place to be. Again, they are alternatives out there which I’ve signed up to and testing out right now. As you know, for my blogging needs, I’m using Listed as my go to blogging platform and It’s worked out great. For video, DailyMotion requires no phone number but they do require an email address but EVERY social platform ask for an email and getting an email address that doesn’t require you to give a phone number or back up email is another can of worms. For images, I’m using IMGBox which seems to work for now. There’s tons of image hosting sites and if for some reason IMGBox doesn’t work, I can easily switch it out for another image site.

So back to the answer that these “free” social platforms give us, the whole “we use it to weed out spam and abusers” spill. Okay, that’s a decent answer but isn’t there a better way to handle this? There are some non-abusing and non-spammers who use these platforms that crave anonymity just as well. I have another trick up my sleeve, when I get some money I’ll just buy a real burner phone and see if that works. If it doesn’t, guess I’m screwed. Or maybe I should sit back and see what DailyMotion can do for me. Perhaps I can find a micro blog that is similar to twitter, I’ll have to check into that. Well, I’ll end this here because I have to go look on how to use bitcoin so I can e-beg. Peace.


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