If they were honest, more people would opt out of the deal. The waste your time signing up for an account so that there's a loss incurred by abandoning it. Then accusation is a lie that probably helps shame some percentage of people into complying or makes them afraid they've accidentally committed a crime or maybe their new account has been hacked and will be used nefariously if they don't comply.
Meta even uses this to extort driver's license scans out of long existing accounts. Twitter and Microsoft both use this altered the deal scam to get phone numbers as well for new accounts. Meta and Twitter have both been fined for using 2FA numbers for tracking in the past. They want that PII and they don't have a problem with outright lying and misusing data to get at it.
Meta even uses this to extort driver's license scans out of long existing accounts. Twitter and Microsoft both use this altered the deal scam to get phone numbers as well for new accounts. Meta and Twitter have both been fined for using 2FA numbers for tracking in the past. They want that PII and they don't have a problem with outright lying and misusing data to get at it.