111–120 of 158 posts
It would be nice to have a self hosted server that you can use with some friends. example: Me and 2 other friends use our own server while with my parents use signal server.
Green account promoting federation without naming it? It's getting a little bit obvious guys. I love both but come on...
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Telegram's desktop client is the best I ever used. It's so extremely responsive. It is written in Qt instead of memory-hogging electron and the difference in how it feels is night and day. If signal were to develop a new client I wish they'd do native toolkit as well.
Technically the Telegram desktop client and libsignal are both open source, so maybe someone could hook them up? :)
Can somebody explain their financial model? How are they paying for the servers and stuff. The claim "No ads. No trackers." and that they are "free for everyone".
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You're getting downvoted because your comment doesn't add anything to the conversation. To claim something isn't free to the user just because it has externalities is a cheap rhetorical trick that doesn't give any new information or perspective.
Of course it does. OP asked "how do they manage to have a business". "Depend on donations" is not viable for a large-scale operation that has costs that grows with the customer base.
Perhaps the downvoters disagree?
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It has worked for Wikipedia. It's hard to live on donations, but as a user it is still better than Signal being a for-profit company, as their goal would then be to increase the YoY revenue and eventually making unsavoury decisions. No, there is no such thing as free lunch: either the user is at future risk or the company is at future risk. This is the best arrangement for users.
Wikipedia's costs do not grow linearly with the amount of people accessing it. Signal has to run servers and store the data for every user it has. Also, if the wikimedia foundation closed tomorrow, Wikipedia's content would live on mirrors and IPFS gateways. It would still be useful - perhaps even more efficient than it is. Signal's outage yesterday that this logic does not apply for them. If they run out of money or…
Wikipedia also needs to run servers. Slope may be less steep and there is part for hosting of content but mandatory costs are also growing linearly with the amount of people accessing it.
(WMF problems and how money is spend is a bit related issue, but it is not mandatory spending)
Is there any way to send messages via Signal using an API to a previously approved number? i.e. someone accepts my chat, then I can send messages via an API? I cant find much (good) documentation on it..? I have a system that needs to send alerts from an enterprise system, and we need a more secure way than Telegram...
Not sure if this fits your needs, but I am maintaining this project here: https://github.com/bbernhard/signal-cli-rest-api
I would say one of the most important things they need to compete with WhatsApp is a better desktop client. WhatsApp's client is great because it works in the browser and is a joy to use. It would be nice if people didn't have to be burdened with downloading a big Electron app and then sit through the slow process where it syncs contacts etc. (kind of makes the user feel like it's broken)
Telegram's desktop client is the best I ever used. It's so extremely responsive. It is written in Qt instead of memory-hogging electron and the difference in how it feels is night and day. If signal were to develop a new client I wish they'd do native toolkit as well.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/unigram-telegram-for-windo...
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So, not really "free for everyone". TANSTAAFL. Downvoters, kindly explain what is so wrong about my statement. There are costs to run the operation, having generous benefactors writing big checks (a) do not change this, (b) makes Signal's operation dependent on the source of revenue and (c) hide these externalities long enough to hinder the development of cheaper/more efficient alternatives. IOW, "depending on donati…
You're getting downvoted because your comment doesn't add anything to the conversation. To claim something isn't free to the user just because it has externalities is a cheap rhetorical trick that doesn't give any new information or perspective.
There is a fine line between donation and payment laundering. The latter happens more often than people would like to believe. For the thousands of 501c3s out there, there's nowhere near enough grannies writing $25 checks to keep even half of them in the black.
edit: and we are not alone in this suspicion
I would say one of the most important things they need to compete with WhatsApp is a better desktop client. WhatsApp's client is great because it works in the browser and is a joy to use. It would be nice if people didn't have to be burdened with downloading a big Electron app and then sit through the slow process where it syncs contacts etc. (kind of makes the user feel like it's broken)
Agreed. And not only that, in my case at least the Signal desktop app is randomly missing messages (and 100% of the images). I tried reinstalling it multiple times to no avail (Ubuntu). I'd really love to see more 3rd party alternatives.
We rarely get to see an app have to grow suddenly like that. And with Signal being open source, it must be very educational to follow. Has anyone found a publication around what they had to do on the technical side (code)? Edit: Their server's repo hasn't been updated since April 2020. Why? https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server
Did it scale more than Pokemon Go? https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/01/what-...