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Comment by ocdtrekkie | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, as someone who carries neither iOS or Android devices, app only social networks won't ever pick me up.

It's worse... Once you've signed up through mobile, you can use it from any browser. Makes you wonder why it wants you to sign up on mobile... Wants your phone number? Wants access to you contacts?

What else? I assume that the whole reddit thing is the same. Install our app so we can suck your phone dry of your personal data.

You do not need to install the reddit apps ever. You can sign up, and use it, through their web interface.

In fact when I use reddit from my phone (through Firefox) I force it to use the non-mobile version as I find it much faster (as long as you open every link in a new tab).

So websites now no longer simply want new users, they want unique,verified users.

I understand the need for such verification when a webmaster wants to prevent easy re-registrations of trolls and/or banned members, and it's still better than Google's invite only system for when they release something big like gmail or g+, but it's a dark pattern all the way.

A perfectly good explanation is deterring spammers.

Easy enough to fake your user agent. Or is it a native app with extra security / checks?

I thought we were talking about phone numbers. They're not impossible to obtain in bulk, but that's much harder than faking user agents.

If they wanted to verify my phone number, text me a code. That isn't a problem. It's the app install requirement we're talking about. Which both gives them access to some data on your phone, and also means only Android and iOS users can sign up.

(On Android, Hello gets access to your contacts, your rough location, the ability to read and modify your storage, use your camera, and view your Wi-Fi connections)

Read and Modify Storage and Camera permissions are needed so that it can take pictures, presumably to post (Why so many Android apps think they need to be their own camera instead of just dumping out to the user's preferred camera app I'll never understand). Everything else seems pretty sketchy.

Well, and as you point out, the camera permission is arguably completely specious. Android should, if I recall, also have a photo picker so you can select a single photo to give to the app, rather than giving it global access to your stuff.

I understand why it wants contacts, to make it easy to add people, but again, it can be done in a "let the OS offer the contact picker" way, if we're making a privacy-respecting app.

If Google is expected to be the steward of protecting users, they should not allow apps on the Play Store which don't use the most privacy-respecting method possible to implement the needed functionality.

Mobile only signup does nothing to deter spammers.

I recommend you check out what a click farm looks like: https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=click%20farm

I know what they look like, but I also know about services like Sift Science. I used "deterring" rather than stronger words for a reason. On a couple of former teams, I had to deal occasionally with spammer scum.

I'm frankly not interested to be part of an exclusive social media thing where only people who have phones can participate.

They pick you up because at least some, if not most of your friends are using app-only social networks that have access to their contacts and phone books. A few matching entries with your phone number and they have you pegged with a very high degree of certainty and connected to more than just your phone number and text messages. Everything your friends have in their contact info for you (birthday, email, home address, work address, family members, etc.). Obviously the same thing is true for your SMS/MMS messages that are sent to friends with app-only social networks which have access to their messages and call info. In the end you're giving away most of the same data, the difference is that you're just unable to benefit from it in the same way that you could with an Android or iOS device.

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