If your IP (and possible your browser) looks "suspicious" or has been used by other users before, you need to add additional information for registration on gitlab.com, which includes your mobile phone number and possibly credit card information. Since it is not possible to contribute or even report issues on open source projects without doing so, I do not think any open source project should use this service until they change that.
Screenshot: https://i.ibb.co/XsfcfHf/gitlab.png
https://codeberg.org/
I would LOVE to switch to codeberg for work, but my work requires that all data be hosted in the US, so I recently pitched GitLab as an alternative to GitHub, even though it's not perfect.
Wait. Wtf does it need to be US specifically? So the goverment has full access to the data or what?
Export controls or legal compliance, most likely. Export controls because the code may be a protected technology, or compliance because the company doesn't have gdpr or some other legal framework.
In which case, get your code off the net and use Forgejo to get your own instance, same as codeberg. If hosting location is a real issue, bring it home.
That's eventually the plan, but I expect that process to take on the order of a year, unfortunately.