Requiring a phone number is part of fraud & spam prevention. Maybe you'd make a different tradeoff but that's not "no reason."
> ...
> But according to the FTC, much more was going on behind the scenes. In fact, in addition to using people’s phone numbers and email addresses for the protective purposes the company claimed, Twitter also used the information to serve people targeted ads – ads that enriched Twitter by the multi-millions.
source: https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2022/05/twitter-p...
So you're right, it wasn't for "no reason", but it also wasn't just for fraud and spam prevention, security, or any of the other lies Twitter told users.
But then again, they wouldn't make much money otherwise.
like my sibling said, twitter was dishonest to their users how the phone number was to be used
if it's just to prevent bot signups, why keep it on file at all?
> if it's just to prevent bot signups, why keep it on file at all?
I mean, you need the actual number for 2FA. I guess maybe you could hash it after some amount of time just for blocking bots? You couldn't just discard it or one number could create unlimited bots.
There’s more to sorting than just ads, security and fraud.