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

Claim 1: Debate is the means by which people come to consensus in the world. Response 1: Really? I have almost never seen more than one or two people swayed by arguments on this site, nor in real-life competitive debates. If debate is the main discourse by which people come to a consensus, there will always be a great amount of disagreement among people. Further, even if debate was the means by which we come to consensus, the identity confirmation is not required for you to continue to debate on this website. It is only required if you wish to vote, and only because otherwise people make multiple accounts to up-vote themselves or down-vote others. Claim 2: Voter anonymity is more important than how many votes a person who exploits the system can make. Response 2: When people have 5-10 accounts, voting gets VERY distorted. However, a loss of voter anonymity would have a trivial impact at best on voting. Even so, voter anonymity is NOT lost. When you vote, no one else knows who you are and who you voted for. Does that not fit the definition of anonymity? Claim 3: Identity confirmation limits freedom of speech because ???? Response 3: I really do not know what my opponent is driving at with this point. He admits that it's "so basic it's hard for [him] to demonstrate." Apparently. He claims that I have claimed that fear of reprisal is a non-issue. I never claimed this. Even if you confirm your identity, you are still anonymous. No one else can see that phone number. Even so, one does not have to confirm his or her identity. I haven't yet done it, though I plan to. I am still capable of making all speech I want on this site. And there is no fear of reprisal. I do not see how there would be fear of reprisal if one did confirm his or her identity, either. I ask my opponent to please try explaining this in straightforward terms next round. Claim 4: The ethic is freedom of speech... Response: Alright, a core ethic of debate is freeness of speech. Sure. But my opponent has failed to show any link between Identity confirmation and any loss in freedom of speech. Or a link between this Identity confirmation and a loss of anonymity. Most people on this site have went ahead and gotten their identities confirmed. However, note that you or I know nothing more about this person. Only the debate.org database knowns anything more, and it already knew identity-compromising information, like your email address. However, it's not compromising, since this database does not let anyone else know this information. Claim 5: The demographic is manipulated, since only those with cell phones get a say. Response: it is better than the twisted voting demographic we had before: people who were willing to make 5-10 accounts got 5-10 says. Not only that, but these extra accounts were made specifically to distort the voting outcome. If you do not have a cell phone or do not trust this site with your phone number, you do not have to give them your number. It's true that voting will be a bit distorted because of this. However, voting was much MORE distorted beforehand, since people would intentionally use accounts to downvote all of a person's debates, to vote for themselves multiple times, etc. The distortion we face now is far lesser than before. Claim 6: Anonymity is an important freedom. Response: And you still have it. Even if you define anonymity in some strange way, where giving a site your number whose privacy policy prevents them from doing anything with your number is a breach of anonymity, you do not have to go through the identity confirmation process. Claim 7: Identity confirmation hurts our First Amendment rights. Response: Your speech is not restricted due to identity confirmation. You are still allowed to voice your opinion in debates and comments, you just cannot have your opinion count towards the voting outcome. This is necessary to reduce cheating with multiple accounts, which wildly distorted the voting on many debates. Also, note that there are terms of service already that limit what we can and cannot say. We cannot swear at each other. We cannot make personal attacks on one another. This is because we are not in the public realm right now, we are on a private website, and they have decided that they want an environment where there is no swearing. They want an environment where there are no deliberate personal attacks. And they want an environment where there is no ability to cheat the system as so many have done in the past. Claim 8: Cursing is against the first amendment. Response: The first amendment does not protect your rights everywhere. For instance, schools have their own policies that limit your speech. You cannot scream profanities and not get in trouble there. Any establishment can set rules like this. What they cannot do is govern how you act outside their establishment. In this sense, infringement of freedom of speech exists on this site [in the same way it exists in any private place in person], but it has absolutely nothing to do with the identity confirmation system. Claim 9: See claim 9 in my opponent's R2. Response: If they do not like the content you have put up on their webserver, they are free to delete it if they wish. Sure, this may be unjust in your opinion. However, once again, it has NOTHING to do with the identity confirmation system. Perhaps my opponent forgot what he was arguing against. Claim 10: See claim 10 in my opponent's R2. Response: No innovation is even possibly being destroyed by this identity confirmation system. Whether or not you confirm your identity, you are free to post the exact same content on this site. The only difference is this: if you do not confirm that you are a real person, rather than an extra account made for distorting the voting, you cannot vote on debates. Compare this to the political voting system. How ridiculous would it be to allow people who would exploit the system to vote as many times as they wished? Quite ludicrous. Any semblance of fairness in voting would be gone. However, what if they made you confirm that you are indeed a distinct individual before you voted [like they do]? This would prevent exploitation of the system. For the same reasons the political voting system needs your identity to allow you to vote, so does this site. Voting anonymously, with not even the system knowing who you are, simply does not work. Claim 11: See claim 11 in my opponent's R2. Response: I responded so that my opponent would not claim that I dropped a point.Whether this site deserves ownership of its domain has nothing to do with the identity confirmation system. Claim 12: The old voting system was broken not because of a lack of identification, but because of a lack of voting options. Response: Most of the voting issues were because a person wanted to have several votes. Not because of a lack of voting options. more voting options does not stop someone from wanting 5-10 accounts. My opponent closes by claiming that these debates don't really convince anyone, and are basically polls or somewhere where people are rated on form. This seems to directly contradict his first claim, that debate is primarily a means of convincing others. The voter identification system prevents cheating, which was a huge problem. Far from absurd.