If we were going to rank our priorities, they would be in this order:<p>1) Make mass surveillance impossible.<p>2) Stop targeted attacks against crypto nerds.<p>It&#x27;s not that we don&#x27;t find #2 laudable, but optimizing for #1 takes precedence when we&#x27;re making decisions.<p>If you don&#x27;t want to use your phone number, don&#x27;t use it.  You can register with any GV, Twilio, Voicepulse, or other throwaway VoIP number.<p>If you don&#x27;t want to run Chrome, use Chromium instead.<p>If you don&#x27;t want to use Google Play Services, use GcmCore.<p>The world you want this software for is not the world that everyone else lives in.  You can certainly make it work in that world with a little effort, but because of how we&#x27;ve prioritized our objectives, that&#x27;s not the default experience.