I think you’re jumping the gun a bit. They’re just saying that requiring a phone number added a barrier against spammers and they want to be sure this change doesn’t open the flood gates.

From the article:

"We gotta figure out some way to induce a cost for signing up without a phone number”, Kret said.

It’s unclear whether this means that registration without a phone number will become a paid feature.

However, “cost” does not necessarily mean a monetary fee; it could also refer to another barrier designed to prevent abuse.

A Capcom fan I see.

Sega Saturn is even better with the additional shoulder buttons.

I’ve noticed this sort if thing becoming more common and I think it is very much related to bots scraping the web. I’m sure they’ll be happy to sell access to that data though.

This source is a bit questionable. Wikipedia says it is very pro-Israel and has in the past published articles from a fabricated reporter. Their own “about us” page also says their executive editor was formerly with Fox News. This is enough for me to be sceptical. I couldn’t find a local article but this article says the victims did not file a police report.

I’m not saying this didn’t happen and I do believe there are some antisemites using legitimate criticisms of Israel as a screen but there’s a lot of propaganda out there and we should be mindful of spreading unverified information.