@dansup I think that:

a) People have easier access to email addresses than cell phones and the fediverse shouldn't be gatekeeped behind technology that's harder to access

b) A phone number is a far more personal thing to put into a site than an e-mail address and people generally don't like giving their numbers to sites to register with.

Sure, that makes spam more likely, but I'm fine with that trade-off.

@dansup i read, don't remember where, that in #fédiverse, software should not be designed to limit accessibility nor interactions between people but to help them having behaviours as it could be in a mature relationship.

@dansup I don't think a phone number is the way to go. There are a lot of security issues around this and more people are moving away from them in, in my opinion.

Maybe requiring 2FA for a while to curb any spam as that also sets users up for good security practices as well?

@dansup I’m on a server of three people, and I’m really curious about this fediverse spam thing.. what is it and can you not just block the instance it’s coming from? I do not get spam on mastodon. Occasionally there’s a toxic user, but I just block them or their instance, depending, and it’s rare enough that it’s a surprise when it happens.

SMS costs money per message and this alone means it's a non-starter. Besides, phone numbers have other issues:
- The security, and the continued existence, of your phone number is wholly dependent on your carrier. You can't take it into your own hands.
- Phone numbers are tied to countries. This is a problem for people who travel.
- You can't self-host a phone number.
- In many countries around the world, a government-issued ID is required to buy a sim card, which means no anonymity whatsoever.

@dansup SMS is the worst, it de-anonymizes users, which in my opinion is the last thing in the world we want on the fediverse. As others have mentioned, there are other non-invasive ways of doing this https://social.tchncs.de/@pixelcode/108809957438487103

@dansup see this post by @pluralistic
And the EFF
https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/108810629044816852

@dansup as seen in the latest Twitter data leak SMS is not secure, and there were plenty of examples to back this argument.

I’d rather enforce enabling 2FA with Authenticator app during registration.

@dansup this wouldn't even eliminate spam it would just exclude people without phone numbers

the way to eliminate spam is human approval of registrations and federation

@dansup I’m against utilizing SMS. It’s not secure, exposes phone numbers necessarily, and excludes anyone without a phone.

@dansup The next logical step will be SMS-based password recovery, because it always happens after that, which will be used by governments to fuck social accounts of any person they don't like. Nice plan :shrug_akko: