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alyeska2today at 4:58 PM3 repliesview on HN

Even worse, it's hard or impossible to even have an account with any shred of privacy.

I've tried to create pseudoanonymous accounts on both Bluesky and Twitter and then had them be instantly banned before I ever used them. Not even doing anything real privacy like TOR or a VPN, just trying to create an account without revealing my personal phone number.

Ironically, their attempts to crack down on bots means real people like me can't access the sites, while the scammers, propagandists and shills will put in the work to register accounts.


Replies

filolegtoday at 5:09 PM

Just to clarify, what do you mean by "without revealing my personal phone number"?

Did you use a voip number (e.g., Google Voice/Twilio/etc.) instead? Or somehow no number at all? Or a secondary (real) phone number, and Twitter somehow determined it wasn't your primary personal phone number?

Not pushing back against what you said, just trying to understand what factually happened.

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deltoidmaximustoday at 6:33 PM

I wouldn't even care if they blocked my anonymous account from posting or really interacting besides reading things. But of course, preventing bot actions isn't actually why I need an account so they aren't going to let you do that.

cassepipetoday at 7:19 PM

I don't remember giving my phone to bluesky