Is this sarcasm? If not please provide some more details on why you think "2FA was in large part motivated by limiting bot accounts and getting customers phone number". I never used a phone number for 2fa. Mostly TOTP. Bots could do that too. I don't see the connection.

>I can't imagine how much productivity the economy loses every day due to 2FA.

Is it really that much? Every few days I have to enter a 6 digit number I generate on a device I have with me all the time. Writing this comment took me as much time as using 2fa for a handful of services for a month.

> ? Every few days I have to enter a 6 digit number I generate on a device I have with me all the time.

I use more than one service a day, and some infrequently, so for me about every day I have a minute or two where I try to login, need to find my phone (it's not predictable when it will ask), and then type it in. This happens to every person several times a day!

I also now must carry a smart phone with me to participate in society.

But the main drag is that when people lose or break their phones the response is: "just don't do that" and the consequences range from losing your account to calling customer service.

> Mostly TOTP. Bots could do that too. I don't see the connection.

Most people using 2FA do not use TOTP, they use a phone number.

Bots could use TOTP, it's more infrastructure, and it's a proof of work function for them to login.

While I don't take starcraft2wol's theory seriously, there are a bunch of services that have made phone numbers essentially mandatory. They claim this is to "protect your account".

You sign up for a Skype account or Twitter account and decline to give your phone number, instead choosing a different form of 2FA? In my experience your account will be blocked for 'suspicious activity' even if you have literally no activity.

And you still don't take my theory seriously :)

To add, password managers provide great coverage of almost every problem 2FA is. supposed to solve and it improves the workflow your grandma already know (writing passwords on a sheet). The only difference is Google doesn't get any money when you run a script on your own computer.

> It works for the website you're using right now

It doesn't, you can regularly see people getting their accounts stolen here. This wouldn't be possible (or at least this trivial) with any competent implementation of 2fa.