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
You can host your project anywhere you want, setup mirroring to github and drop a link in its description. So you’ll have github visibility and won’t depend on github. Addiitional repo backup is a bonus.
100% mirroring is the way to go.