I tried all sorts of variations of my number. It just won't take it. I expect their validation is wonky/buggy. I used to work for Nokia and remember talking to people responsible for parsing phone numbers. This is not a trivial problem.

Anyway, it hard rejects +49176..., 0049176..., 0176..., 176...; it correctly normalizes each of those to +49176... and then rejects the number. My number is fine. Their validation isn't.

Anyway, for a new social network to repeat the security/privacy mistake of its predecessors (wrongly assuming phone operators are trustworthy and users never change their number) is just madness. Doesn't instill a lot of confidence that a lot of thought went into the whole thing.

IMHO, phone numbers as a thing should just go away completely. Weird legacy identifiers from the last century. Absolutely no redeeming features. Hard to remember, easy to spoof. Etc. Why build your new network on the crumbling remains of an old one and give a lot of control to the typical abusers of the phone system (spammers, scammers, oppressive regimes, etc.)?

Sorry about this. We've just made some changes to make this less likely of an issue going forward.

Same problem with my Norwegian phone number just now.