Funny you’d mention ChatGPT, because that ALSO required a phone number. You used to have to enter in a phone number during the sign up process. If you didn’t have a phone number or didn’t want to enter one, then boom, your access to ChatGPT was revoked until you coughed up that phone number. Now, all of a sudden, you don’t need one when you are making a ChatGPT account. Gee, I wonder why… 🤔

you’re misjudging the capabilitues of the default chatgpt a bit. this is what it made in seconds when i told it to capitalise the OP (without the last paragraph):

I do not have a fucking phone plan or fucking phone for that matter. Stop asking me for shit I don’t fucking have. Every fucking mainstream service out there just expects you to have a fucking phone and phone plan these days. Want to sign up for a website? Verify your goddamn phone number. Want to talk in certain Discord servers? No siree. Verify your phone number first. Locked out of one of your accounts over some bullshit reports? Verify your phone number to unlock it. Literally just fucking existing? Verify, verify, verify! For the love of fuck, stop prompting me to verify my fucking humanity with a phone number. I should not have to look for fucking workarounds and bypasses to get around this shit. Even if I did have an active phone number, you ain’t getting jack shit from me. This is not made to protect you and keep you safe, it is only made so these fucktard companies can sell your data to data brokers, who will then sell that data to robocallers who will call you all the fucking time! Look, you’re not getting my number. If I have to find fucking fake phone numbers or sign up to temp number services, then so fucking be it, but I shouldn’t have to. I should not have to potentially break the fucking law to get some fucking sense of privacy. I literally have a number on TextNow that is basically fucking useless and is only usable for making calls and texting. Even if I was able to use that number to get a verification code in the form of a SMS, it wouldn’t work, because “oh, you need to sign up for another fucking subscription (lock-in number) to get verification codes”! Fuck, I can’t even participate in some Twitch chats due to this bullshit because some fucking streamers set up this stupid-ass ‘verified accounts only chat’ bullshit that forces you to verify via phone number to access them. And guess what? My TextNow number? Fucking useless on about 90% of services on the fucking internet! Why? Oh, well, because some fucking ‘genius’ decided to make it harder for people like me by blocking VoIP numbers completely. And TextNow is a VoIP service. If I do too many attempts to verify, I get ‘rate limited’. Fuck. Off. Give me another fucking way to verify because you are sure as fucking hell not getting access to more of my data! I wouldn’t be able to even “start” this procedure, anyway, because I don’t have a fucking phone to begin with! Do you know how much fucking phone plans cost these days? Well, hundreds, maybe even thousands of dollars. Do you really expect me to go buy a fucking phone plan that is overpriced as shit, get a phone number, and verify with it? Oh, fuck you. And guess the fuck what? Guess who loves phone numbers? Fucking data leakers. Should I even remind you about the Twitch data leak that took place over 2 years ago? Personal information accessed. That possibly included phone numbers. That means that the people who got breached probably had a shit-ton of robocalls. Goddamnit, the internet is not a fucking exclusive club, you goddamn dickweeds. Back when I was around the internet, you didn’t need to give out jack shit when signing up for websites or participating in chat. Holy fuck, IRC didn’t even need that shit. AIM didn’t need it. You could just make a fucking account on the AOL website or your IRC client, and boom, you could talk to anyone in your contacts. No strings or anything else attached. But nowadays, you have to give out a shit-ton of personal info to access nearly almost everything, and that includes having a phone number, because if you don’t have one, then you are apparently just fucked, because everyone expects you to have access to a fucking cellular device. Back in the 2000s, having a fucking phone was a fucking novelty. You could even consider yourself lucky if you had one. Now, everyone expects you to have one. Like, what the fuck? I hate the fucking fake-ass excuses companies give by claiming that having a phone number makes you more secure. Bro, that is a fucking lie and a half. Where’s my fucking lie detector? All it does is gives data-hungry companies access to more of your information, as if they don’t have fucking enough of it already. I missed out on so many goddamn cool things because of this shitty-ass forced phone number verification. I fucking missed out on Monster Hunter Frontier when it was still up and running due to this bullshit. Now, it is fucking shut down forever and I missed out on it entirely because of overzealous verification. I truly thought that phone verification was going to be easy as there are several different websites where you can receive SMS texts with either ‘real’ or ‘fake’ phone numbers. Nope! Not only does the phone number not have to be already used by too many people, but it also has to specifically not be a VoIP number. I might as well say 99% of the entire fucking internet don’t support these fucking numbers. They might as well tell you to fuck off and buy a phone plan. “Do you guys not have phones?” might as well sum up two-factor authentication entirely. Does it look like I have a fucking phone? Then do not ask me for a fucking phone number or ask me to use anything that requires an app! I fucking hate those goddamn ‘authenticator’ apps because of this as well, because they ‘also’ require you to have access to a phone. We already pay for food, housing, electricity, internet, water, and other essentials. Stop asking me to get a fucking phone plan and put in my fucking phone number just to access nearly half of the entire fucking internet. Besides, you won’t be getting my actual phone number even if I “did” have one, so tough fucking shit. Go ask other fucking people to put in their goddamn phone numbers, because that is obviously your fucking day-to-day activity.