I only plan to use it for messaging in a couple of sports teams and event invitations.

I'm willing to take a lot of measures as long as they don't get the account blocked - no phone app, dedicated virtual machine+VPN to isolate from other internet activity, purchased fake phone number in signup, adding fake interests and life details. However, I won't provide any real ID/photos, are these needed for signup?

Update: registered with a well-known VPN and an online purchased fake number. Added a couple of friends and made a few junk posts. Asked to confirm with selfie after 4 days, didn't have any activity whatsoever during the last two days so it wasn't as if I did any action which immediately triggered the check.