• Akimoto@lemmy.ml
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    2 years ago

    They probably do it to prevents spam/abuse. It is supposed to be a better WhatsApp after all, not a completely federated software. So it gotta be somewhat user friendly.

    • Democracy@lemmy.ml
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      2 years ago

      What? It’s easier for spammers/scammers to enumerate phone numbers (because they follow a specific pattern) than usernames or random IDs.

      • AgreeableLandscape@lemmy.ml
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        2 years ago

        Probably referring to that it’s harder for scammers to create scam accounts because they need to verify the phone number is actually theirs before the account can send messages. IMO, still not worth requiring a phone number for the 90% of legitimate users.

    • poVoq@lemmy.ml
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      2 years ago

      The original argument is that Signal does not want to create a social graph of user accounts on their server and rather rely on the already existing one of the users phone book.

      But that is very narrow thinking and ultimately counterproductive as others have pointed out here already.