To me:
We left whitelist on trust so you did not have to connect X or prove a like, retweet, or follow. That was the comfortable path — and spam used it. Sign in with X is now required.
The handle we store is the account you log in with, not a name someone typed. Sorry for the extra step.
We would rather ask once than let fake entries crowd out people who actually showed up.
From pepehood team.