Insidious.

The problem IMO is the need to link your profile to phone number. Correct me if I'm wrong, without that it would be difficult to distinguish user nationality and pipe a different algorithm to pump garbage or healthier content. Maybe IP allows to do the same, but that is the beautiful thing about connecting from different locations, and to my mind is how and why the internet was designed.

Not that it provides much anonymity if there's real incentive to trace, but that little protection or masking that it can provide to stop profiling users based on location, just like drawing the curtains in your home. Gulag surveillance is the problem. There's no benefit to exposing your location from a users perspective. It does not increase security.