This is, IMO, the most important comment in this thread.
Requiring a phone number has privacy implications, but the total consequences are more far-reaching.
You must have a smart phone, you must have your location, your habits, and your characteristics tracked by corporations and governments, you must be a good consumer, you must have a credit rating, you must participate in the wanton destruction of the planet via the two-year planned obsolescence cycle.
Otherwise, you can't play with our shiny new thing.
Requiring a phone number has privacy implications, but the total consequences are more far-reaching.
You must have a smart phone, you must have your location, your habits, and your characteristics tracked by corporations and governments, you must be a good consumer, you must have a credit rating, you must participate in the wanton destruction of the planet via the two-year planned obsolescence cycle.
Otherwise, you can't play with our shiny new thing.