The need for "Identity Confirmation" with a phone number is aburd.

1: My opponent claims that my personal experience - that people are rarely truly swayed by arguments on this site - is not a valid argument. First, it doesn't really matter, since this is one of the many points my opponent brought up that has nothing to do with the identity confirmation system. Second, my opponent himself made this very same claim near the end of last round - he said "I already know I can't convince anyone. These debates amount to polls. At best I'll get rated on my form." 2: My opponent notes that he does not trust the site, and therefore doesn't want to give them his number. Fine. But it is invalid to claim that the fact that HE doesn't trust the site to live up to its legally binding privacy policy has any effect on the rest of us. Every day we place personal information in banks, we swipe a card at McDonald's [they can get your name on the receipt], and yet we [rational people] are fine with that. That is because if these corporations misuse the information, legal action can be taken. The same reason I trust that a person or company will not kill me. Because the site is not allowed to go giving our information to third-parties, we still have anonymity. Even so, my main point here was that reducing the cheating that used to plague the site was more important than a supposed loss of anonymity, a point my opponent failed to address. 3: By my opponent's definition of anonymity, requiring an email address is already a lack of anonymity. Identity confirmation can still leave your anonymity intact because A> debate.org is powerless to obtain your personal information from simply having your mobile phone number and B> the ONLY people who could possibly look at your phone number are the staff, so anonymity is preserved completely for all your interactions with normal users, which are all of your interactions on this site, probably. 4: My opponent has it stuck in his head that debate.org can use the phone number for one of their profit-seeking endeavors. First off, there is nothing debate.org would be able to do, even if it were legal. Having a phone number has no practical implications. They could call you, or send you a text message. That's all they could do with that information. And it is their policy that they will only use it for what you consent to them using it for - for instance, sending you a text message for identity confirmation, as well as supposed opt-in features that will be coming out sometime soon. 5: My opponent keeps saying that the cheating that used to occur might have been prevented because of the new voting system [with the different categories]. However, it is blatantly obvious that at least most of the multiple accounts were used to vote people up or down to influence win ratios. Logic would make it seem as though having a leader board would further this incentive. Logic, however, does not lead us to conclude that people usually cheated because they were frustrated with the voting system. It does not make sense. We can use logic to come to our conclusions, we do not need to make everything an experiment. The identity confirmation system is not some experiment whose results we are testing, it is simply a logical solution to a problem we already knew existed. 6: My opponent points out that he is a zealot, in that he is driven to defend the principle of freedom at all costs. What about the freedom of a site to operate how it wishes? No? The freedom of a business to hire whoever they want? No? So by freedom, my opponent is referring to mandating how certain entities act. Rather than the reasonable sort of freedom, where any mutually agreed upon arrangement is fine. So then, since this site should not be able to know something as harmless as your phone number, why is it OK for a bank to know your name, address, social security number, etc.? I'll tell you why. It's because no one's forcing you to make an account at any banks. It is something you can choose to do or not to do. Just like this site. Indeed, debate.org voting privileges are far LESS mandatory in a person's life than a bank. Giving information to someone is not a loss of freedom. You still have the choice. 7: You can still discuss whatever you want. There is NO time when giving your mobile phone number to debate.org will even possibly limit your speech. Any speech one could even think of being at risk here would probably be taken down by the staff irrespective of identity confirmation. 8: Every private entity is allowed to determine what you can and cannot do on their property. One is not allowed to urinate in the middle of McDonalds, isn't this some sort of oppression? One cannot yell obscenities in a library. This is because the library has determined what environment it wants in its walls, and it's not about to let some troll ruin that environment by making an obscene ruckus. However, an entity is not going to enforce ridiculous restrictions, because people would stop doing business with them. For instance, if McDonalds mandated that you'll be thrown out if you speak any words in their establishment, no one would go there. They're still free to mandate that, but they'd be quick to go out of business because of it. So yes, private firms can determine the rules in their own property, as long as they are not in conflict with other laws. 9: My opponent seems to be making arguments about people he doesn't even know. He criticized me in point 1 for using my own experiences as a basis for a conclusion, but now he is doing the same thing... except with NO experience. He claims that the admins are dishonorable and partial - likely to misuse your phone number. But he has nothing to back this up with. 10: Apparently, my opponent was trying to make an argument about open vs. closed source. I think we can see that this is wholly unrelated to the resolution. My opponent speaks of alternative means of confirming that a person is a distinct person rather than a mule account, but he has given no examples, thus I cannot argue against his nonexistant points. 11: This is not an abuse of power. Only a zealot like my opponent would see it as such. Debate.org is not forcing you to do anything, and all they're asking for is a phone number so they can confirm that you're a real person rather than a mule voting account. This is reasonable by most standards, and those few who think it is unreasonable do not have to participate. Just as people who think it is unjust to have to give a bank your name would simply not get bank accounts. 12: People do not vote multiple times because they're aggravated at the system. That makes no sense. People vote multiple times to either bring someone's win ratio down or to boost their own. It's happened many times in the past. People have gone from a win ratio in the 90's to a win ratio in the 20's, and this was with 30 or so debates. That isn't an instance of a person being aggravated at the simple voting system we used to have. That's someone deliberately manipulating win ratios due to their own motives [in this case, a vendetta]. I will advise my opponent that simply staying on the site and not voting would be better than leaving altogether. My opponent wants a society living on one extreme, the extreme where people have ultimate privacy and it is absurd for any establishment to ask for any information. Anonymity is only given up consensually, so there is no problem, even if we hold anonymity in as much esteem as my opponent does. Not to mention that the amount of anonymity that is consensually given up is laughable at best. When we consider this, and that the mobile phone confirmation is for a real goal [eliminating cheaters], we see that it is far from absurd.