Re:Twitter’s Policy Reboot: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
by wdmeldon on Tuesday January 12, 2016 @09:27AM
(#10887548)
- require every account to be linked to a cell phone number using SMS
They currently do this to "problem accounts". I have no interest in giving Twitter my phone number and would ideally like to not even have a phone number in the next few years.
Re:Twitter’s Policy Reboot: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
by acdha on Tuesday January 12, 2016 @09:32AM
(#10887583)
That's a perfect example of the problem: it'd make it harder but far from impossible to cheat (cheap SIMs, spoofing through insecure telcos, etc) and there are a non-zero number of legitimate users who don't want to give Twitter a phone number.
You'd probably need some sort of hybrid approach to do this for real – SMS validation counts as x points, y months of interaction with other users without a complaint counts as z points, etc. It's similar to the email anti-spam measures but a less daunting problem since they don't interoperate with many thousands of other peers (for better and for worse).
- ban the email address associated with an account from creating other accounts, or in the softer form make someone blocking a user on Twitter block every address using that address. This would run into problems with things like + aliases and people running custom domains who have an effectively unlimited number of addresses, all of which can be reduced but not eliminated if you invest time in it.
- require every account to be linked to a cell phone number using SMS (“mandatory two-factor for everyone!”). This would be more effective than emails but would cost some users real money, screw or delay others if they have unreliable cell carriers, and completely block anyone who doesn't have a cell phone.
- require every account to be verified using a credit card, blocking anyone without a card and no doubt discouraging others. This works great for metafilter.com but there's also a reason why MetaFilter is a site loved by thousands of users rather than millions.
The problem is that Twitter was a VC-funded company which had a big IPO based on highly optimistic growth estimates and their corporate thinking appears to be focused on maintaining those unsustainable numbers. Anything which slows people creating accounts goes directly against the goal of having ever-larger numbers to report.