The people trying to spin Twitter making SMS MFA pay-to-play as a good security move are causing me actual, physical pain. —Why are you doing this?— Why are you trying to make another silly Twitter business decision sound like it was one for noble and considered reasons and not more haphazard cost cutting, like layoffs and missed rent?

I have a immediate relative (and a few pals) who cannot afford or use a smartphone that runs modern apps, like an Authenticator. I just barely got a few close family members to understand how to copy numbers out of a text message, and what that means, after years of work.

You are letting perfect security be the enemy of slightly good good security, again. Some MFA is massively better than nothing, and all those folks are just shutting it off.

@hacks4pancakes Anything that changes untargeted attacks to targeted ones -vastly- decreases overall attack surfaces regardless of how pathetic the targeting needs to be. It's very angering how many alleged professionals can't seem to comprehend this extremely simple fact.

@munin just raising the barrier a little to entry deters so much

@hacks4pancakes It makes me seriously question their threat assessment skills.

@munin @hacks4pancakes If you aren't going to be the victim of a targeted attack, the risks of SMS decline dramatically.

There are people for which text messages are totally appropriate.

@JoeUchill @munin I feel like people are trying to gaslight me about this... it's crazy. I don't think there has been a topic in years I have been so out of sync with the cybersecurity community on. Maybe Snowden.

@hacks4pancakes Musk is not a good engineer or sn6 engineer at all. Nobody is left at Bird HQ who can talk any sense into him. All he sees is an extra bill for the SMS service. So he cancels it. He’s bad news for anything he touches, though aspaceX seems to be doing surprisingly well. But I suspect that’s because he’s mainly occupied with driving Tesla and Bird HQ into the ground.