Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive
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Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive
#2> Storage: $1.3 million dollars per year.
> Servers: $2.9 million dollars per year.
> Registration Fees: $6 million dollars per year.
> Total Bandwidth: $2.8 million dollars per year.
> Additional Services: $700,000 dollars per year.
Signal pays more for delivering verification SMS during sign-up, than for all other infrastructure (except traffic) combined. Wow, that sounds excessive.
Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive
#3> Storage: $1.3 million dollars per year. > Servers: $2.9 million dollars per year. > Registration Fees: $6 million dollars per year. > Total Bandwidth: $2.8 million dollars per year. > Additional Services: $700,000 dollars per year. Signal pays more for delivering verification SMS during sign-up, than for all other infrastructure (except traffic) combined. Wow, that sounds excessive.
is there any way they can reduce that cost?
Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive
#4> Storage: $1.3 million dollars per year. > Servers: $2.9 million dollars per year. > Registration Fees: $6 million dollars per year. > Total Bandwidth: $2.8 million dollars per year. > Additional Services: $700,000 dollars per year. Signal pays more for delivering verification SMS during sign-up, than for all other infrastructure (except traffic) combined. Wow, that sounds excessive.
is there any way they can reduce that cost?
Yeah, decouple Signal user identity from the phone number.
Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive
#5All things considered. Pretty impressive how cheap it is to run given the adoption of the Signal.
Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive
#6> Storage: $1.3 million dollars per year. > Servers: $2.9 million dollars per year. > Registration Fees: $6 million dollars per year. > Total Bandwidth: $2.8 million dollars per year. > Additional Services: $700,000 dollars per year. Signal pays more for delivering verification SMS during sign-up, than for all other infrastructure (except traffic) combined. Wow, that sounds excessive.
Twitter said that's why they got rid of the SMS 2FA. They said it was costing millions to have that enabled for them.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/18/business/twitter-blue-two-fac...
Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive
#7[deleted]
Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive
#8Back in the day Signal was called TextSecure and it did everything over SMS which required no centralized infrastructure aside from the cellular networks. They transitioned to internet-based messaging to support Apple devices. It seems that decision is now a 50 million dollar per year step backwards.
Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive
#9> Storage: $1.3 million dollars per year. > Servers: $2.9 million dollars per year. > Registration Fees: $6 million dollars per year. > Total Bandwidth: $2.8 million dollars per year. > Additional Services: $700,000 dollars per year. Signal pays more for delivering verification SMS during sign-up, than for all other infrastructure (except traffic) combined. Wow, that sounds excessive.
I really wonder why it’s so expensive to run. I always hear things about scaling but I used to run a top 500 alexia website and it was just a php app running on a mutualized offer for $5/month. Lots of manual caching though but still.
My wild guess is that either the stack is not really optimal (last I heard it was java) or they do other costly things at scale (sgx?)
Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive
#10> Storage: $1.3 million dollars per year. > Servers: $2.9 million dollars per year. > Registration Fees: $6 million dollars per year. > Total Bandwidth: $2.8 million dollars per year. > Additional Services: $700,000 dollars per year. Signal pays more for delivering verification SMS during sign-up, than for all other infrastructure (except traffic) combined. Wow, that sounds excessive.
I did my part to help reduce costs by switching to the decentralized alternative, Session.[0]
Bonus: Session does not demand users' phone number. Also no bundled cryptocurrency.[1]