Yeah, I had to get a separate number just to please twitter's automation.

Their approach is somewhat understandable - stopping bots is a hard problem, phone number in theory represents a material cost and a hurdle to someone who wants to rapidly register thousands of new accounts.

Don't you have a burner phone/sim for these types of requests?

This is brought up every time this subject is discussed. Is a burner phone a normal thing that regular people have?

But no, I don't have a burner phone. I'm not going to buy a phone and a SIM just as some kind of non-solution to tech companies having a hard-on for invading peoples privacy.

I have an old phone (who doesn't) which I leave plugged in on my desk, with a £5 payg sim card.