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I understand putting a physical cost on an account in terms of spam prevention. This is actually a really good idea because spam thrives mainly due to it costing so little.

However why the fake number? Why not ask for money directly?

The codebase is a good point, hopefully this will be fixed in the future.



> why the fake number

Backwards compatibility probably? I think having a phone number present is built so deep in the architecture that it’s easier to add a fake number than change it overnight and wait for universal adoption of new client versions.




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