alt Hacker NewsI don't understand how this post stacks up against the myriad of communications apps that not only require phone verification when creating a new profile (and maybe SMS2FA), but put great effort into blocking as many VoIP/burner/prepaid numbers as possible.
"Most"? maybe "a troubling few"?
Phone verification is absolutely a widely exploited data mining opportunity, I don't see how it's a red herring at all. It's one of the worst surveillance mechanisms we live with today, only partially waved away with the 2000's concept of burner numbers.
To single out Meta properties, I'd point to both Instagram and WhatsApp. It was an official policy early on that you could only create a WhatsApp account if it was connected to a "real" cellular number, I think the same has been true about Instagram for a while in that every time I tried to create an account without a cellular number it didn't work. Put in a cellular number and it worked just fine.