>Grounding identity in a phone number is very reasonable for almost all normal usage

In many jurisdictions, telecoms form an abusive oligopoly, and you need to provide a state-issued identity document to get a phone number.

That is not at all reasonable for normal usage - unlike well-known non-abusive authentication methods, such as a keypair; or its even simpler cousin, the username/password.

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oofbey 8 hours ago | parent [-]

I guess it depends on what you consider normal. Most of the humans I know find it vastly easier to produce a state issued id to an authority than to generate a public/private key pair.

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balamatom 7 hours ago | parent [-]

What's easier: to obtain state ID, or to sign up to a website with your preferred username and password?

	▲	vel0city 7 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Well, I and a lot of the people I'm going to talk to through things like Signal are going to have a state ID regardless as I live in a country where one practically needs to drive a car to function in society. On top of that so many other things just inherently expect one to have a phone number. It would be somewhat odd to not have a phone number for most of the people I know and talk to through platforms like Signal. So to your question of which is easier, having the state ID and a phone number is easier because I'll already have that for a multitude of reasons. If you live in a place where its rare to have a phone number, then yes I agree Signal probably isn't a good choice.
	▲	oofbey 7 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Obtaining your first id is obviously difficult. But so is obtaining your first computer. If you’re on good terms with your government, obtaining the id is easier. That’s really the key. Sure if you focus on hostile states this stuff all makes sense. If you’re insistent on hiding from authorities then many things become much more difficult, by design.