You must give a telephone number to create an account. I know they're doing this as an extra measure to prevent the site from being overrun by bots, but it's still something that makes a lot of people uncomfortable.
The phone number thing is more understandable to prevent bots making it unusable. The preventing traffic unless they sign up is just annoying as fuck. It's essentially telling potential visitors that unless you sign up and give us your information, you're not welcome. If Trump and government accounts decide to move to Parler, it would essentially force millions of people to make accounts with them in order to be able to get government announcements.
Yeah, my two biggest gripes with Parler are:
The phone number thing is more understandable to prevent bots making it unusable. The preventing traffic unless they sign up is just annoying as fuck. It's essentially telling potential visitors that unless you sign up and give us your information, you're not welcome. If Trump and government accounts decide to move to Parler, it would essentially force millions of people to make accounts with them in order to be able to get government announcements.