I've been posting on Twitch for over 10 years with a verified email address, but a few months ago, Twitch suddenly locked me out of posting on the entire website unless I also provided my phone number. I asked people who run certain channels if they activated this setting and they showed proof they never activated it, so this has to be Twitch's doing. I've asked Twitch staff about this for months via support tickets, but when an actual human responded to me, they claimed that this was for "everyone's security" when it clearly is not, since millions of Twitch users have never had to provide their phone numbers. When I pointed this out, the Twitch employee blatantly tried to dodge the issue and claimed s/he was closing the support ticket.

Twitch's automated responses and human staff both state that "Twitch Support is unable to bypass the need for phone verification on your behalf for chat or whispers." However, when Twitch shifted to its new visual format this week, my account was suddenly allowed to post again without providing my phone number. I thought Twitch had seen reason, but a few days later, the arbitrary phone restriction was put on my account again.

This is proof that Twitch can indeed remove the arbitrary phone verification requirement at any time! Twitch's bots and staff are thus instructed to literally lie to customers about having no means to lift the arbitrary phone number restriction!

Twitch, please remove the arbitrary, site-wide restriction that demands the phone numbers of random people for them to chat on your website at all. This restriction is clearly not implemented for security reasons, seeing as how it's not mandatory for every user of the website. As of now, this policy of forcing random accounts to provide both an email address and a phone number appears to be extortion.

By the way, I've been attending video game tournaments online with a dual Twitch/YouTube presence, as well as tournaments that are streamed in my area, and letting them know about this experience. The hosts and participants now know that Twitch is liable to try forcing them to provide their phone numbers under false pretenses. They've all agreed to shift their online presence exclusively to YouTube instead.

If Twitch doesn't want to lose even more customers and advertiser views, Twitch should undo the arbitrary phone number demands ASAP.