Twitter demanding a phone number to unlock a 5 min old account after saying it was optional and then pretending I broke their rules just to get my phone number.
As for the uptick in services requiring phone numbers? All the messaging apps, all the freelance websites, facebook, google, classified ad sites/apps. And these are just examples of things I tried using.
What about North Korea? Why does it last there? Why don't they revolt? But actually, a more relevant question would be, why haven't they already? How much suffering can they take?
I'm Romanian too. The censorship, oppression, and whatever other bad thing you might want to refer to, will last as long as the powers that be want it to last. When our "revolution" happened, people didn't even know what to think of it when they heard the news and really many thought it was a joke, and that's because they could not believe it was possible. There was no buildup that "took more than 40 years", a lot of people were satisfied with their lives, the ones that were not were quieted, and the rest were ignorant and didn't really care just like people now under pretty much any regime around the world. Hell, some older people that I have met even say they liked it better back then.
Real population driven revolutions can't really happen anymore, if they ever could.
>even if I wanted to I have no idea if I want to use something in my house.
Everything in your house is toxic. Pick up anything with the ingredients on the label and google a random one that has a funny name. Then read about it on wikipedia and you can go further from there if you want and see the studies. Chances are it is very toxic but it's used in small ammounts so you shouldn't worry about it because the effects only show up after years and years of use.
Then look at the unlabeled stuff and food packaging. What's it made of? What is it coloured with? What's in the glue that holds it together? What does the paper have in it?
Checkout the uses for isothiazolinone and related compounds like methylchloroisothiazolinone if you are curious about something that's in practically everything.
You guessed wrong. If I was trying to set up bots, why would I start blabbing about it on HN? Oh right, you assumed I'm like you.