You still need a phone number to create an account. This just lets you hide it, and lets you share a chosen username with new contacts rather than your phone number, but you still have to provide the phone number to signal.
this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023
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So I could basically create an account on any platform independent of my phone number? I sure hope that's the case.
No. You still need to use a phone number to create an account. The proposed feature lets you pick a username so that you can have people contact you via the username, and you won't have to tell people what your phone number is. You would be able to change your username at any time, and usernames all have a random two-digit number suffix.
Yeah I guess I jumped the gun there. I do wonder why they can't just give the option to create an account instead of using a phone number. Requiring a phone is too limiting.
Completely private messaging with accounts that have no ties to real-world identities would open the doors to spam and all kinds of abuse.
channels incoming?