"I object to having one less slice of cake, but I am still going to eat this slice of cake."

This. Self righteous hypocrisy at its finest, with a large dose of cowardice.

When everyone has the same tracking terms in their contract, you don’t have a choice. It’s Evil#1 or Evil#2 - your choice.

You don't have to choose a cola. You could simply not drink anything. There's always a choice. Sometimes it is unpleasant or socially outlandish, but there is still a choice.

It's not remotely practicable. Go on and try. I look forward to the report proving otherwise after a year or three.

You can't buy things, have accounts (including banking), get healthcare, or get anything done with local government without a phone number. Forced 2FA via SMS is only accelerating normalizing ubiquitous demands for phone numbers. Just as claims of fraud protection have normalized ubiquitous demands for SSNs or driver's license numbers.

You can probably get by without a smartphone, but good luck getting by without a phone number.

Probably the best you can hope to do is to get a number through an online service that doesn't connect to a large telco and which you access solely through Tor.

But my money is on that system not working because you'll get stuck at infinite CAPTCHA loops or silently blocked for looking like abuse.

This is absolutely a place where we need a legislative solution rather than a technological one. Unfortunately the government and corporate incentives aren't aligned with the citizens', so it's not going to happen.

Unless your job requires a smartphone app. Or just a smartphone. Money is optional, right?

Or if your friends are on Facebook, and you have a "choice" of either losing contact with most of your social network, or using Facebook.