so get an anonymous pre-paid number

That’s not something that exists in many countries. SIM-cards have to be attached to a real world identity by law.

Why is that a problem?

Why are you posting as artyom@piefed.social and not <real name>@<home address>?

OK, well buy a burner SIM card

Illegal in many countries. SIM cards are attached to your real world identity.

Multiple-accounts and pseudonyms. It’s like the 101 of interacting on the Internet. With a phone number requirement that’s automatically made impossible.

Also SIM-cards/phone numbers are required by law to be attached to your real world identity in many countries.

The crux is that all the alternatives suck. I don’t have a problem going App hopping, I just have a very hard time finding ones that don’t fundamentally suck, and I am not talking about little implementation issue, but garbage like Signal that violates the GDPR, wants your phone number and is proud of it. Always grinds my gears when that gets celebrated as the “alternative”. Same with the Fediverse, where user owns nothing and server operator controls everything, how again is that different from Reddit, Facebook and Co.?

Nostr and Tox seem ok so far, but really the amount of true alternatives that improve on the original in significant ways is pretty damn rare.