I am too cynical by far, but Signal
being run by an ex-Googler is not at all
reassuring me of its long-term commitments
to security and privacy.
Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive
131–140 of 965 posts
Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive
#132Signal can be better, IMHO, by separating from phone number requirements. In other words, let users have secure random ids, rather than forcing each user to hand over their phone number for phone company verification. It turns out the budget shows the phone number registration problem: the costs to deal with phone number verification seem to be $6MM, which seems to be 10% of the entire budget. If Signal staff are rea…
Session.app solved this problem well
Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive
#133I donate to signal, and use it frequently. But I would much prefer for the app to simply charge users rather than beg for donations. Even better would be to charge users in a way that reflects the costs. For instance, maybe verifying a new number over SMS should cost $0.10 if that's going to make up 14% of the operating costs. Begging for donations to subsidize excessive use by other users just doesn't seem sustainab…
I would certainly prefer the donation begging - chance of getting family and friends to use it with an upfront cost: 0.
Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
The phone number requirement is why WhatsApp won the space over in the first place. There were loads of username+password-based services before it, but none reached the market it did. Why? An incredibly wide user funnel, singing up is frictionless. You might understand that it's a bad idea, but that makes you an outlier.
No, WhatsApp won because it successfully replicated and replaced the SMS experience in the developing world, where the cost of data was dirt cheap in comparison to the cost of a single SMS message. This is why it still has a stronghold as well…
Experience on WhatsApp, Telegram or any other IM is vastly better than SMS. Unless by SMS you mean iMessage - then it's even simpler - most of the world doesn't use iPhones.
Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive
#135Every time I hear about Signal's donation notices I start thinking about ways they might generate revenue. I'm sure Signal staff have considered a ton of options already. Anyway,
- can't do personalized ads or geo-specific ads, so doing generic ads wouldn't drive a ton of revenue anyways
- can't require users payment because when payment (most forms, including bitcoin!) can be used to identify people
- No real benefit to themed group chats (like discord nitro) since it doesn't focus on community groups
I'd love for someone to figure this out, though, because a nonprofit structure for an app is not sustainable.
Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
There was no "registration" and TextSecure never sent you messages. It was strictly peer-to-peer.
You're mistaken. I still have my textsecure account registration verification text message (because I'm a data hoarder) from March 15, 2015
2015 was after the internet-based-messaging transition but before the rename. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TextSecure
Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
is there any way they can reduce that cost?
Send them via whatsapp. A lot of online services give an option to send OTP via whatsapp along with SMS/Email.
As far as I understand, this is even more expensive than SMS in many cases due to WhatsApp's B2C messaging fee structure.
It's also not a great idea to make sign-ups for an instant messaging service contingent on having an account with another, competing service.
Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive
#138Who is the active user base for signal these days? Everyone I knew who was using it dropped off after the SMS debacle, which was a shame. Edit: Wow some weird haters on HN today. I was honestly curious as an active signal user that was no longer able to use it to message people in North America and had never seen anyone using it in East Asia. Apparently this makes some other signal users very angry.
I've been to a lot of meetups in the last year and exchanged contacts with people. As a nerdy idealist running a deGoogled Android with no proprietary software, I always have to tell them that I don’t have WhatsApp, just Signal. Again and again I have heard the reply, “Oh, yeah, I’ve got Signal, I use it to buy drugs.” So, that’s some of the active user base in my city, but none of those users are very motivated to u…
> “Oh, yeah, I’ve got Signal, I use it to buy drugs.”
Funny, people around here in Germany say that about Telegram.
Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive
#139Some of these things raise an eyebrow and I'd like them further broken down (but in the mean time, I'm still donating): * $19 million for 50 staff - That's $338k/head on average. At face value for a nonprofit, I'd like these costs broke down as this seems excessive. There is far cheaper IT labor available outside SV. * 20 petabytes per year of bandwidth, or 20 million gigabytes, to enable voice and video calling alon…
They need to dump sms entirely. Use on device private keys. If users mess it up, it’s on them. People need to get educated about how to manage private keys.
As someone technically savvy, I don't trust myself to manage my own private keys sufficiently for a service that's the point of contact for all my friends and family. I think it's a much taller order for someone without the technical knowhow – remember that Signal's audience includes very non-technical people who don't have time to learn the technical ins and outs but absolutely require its utility, like journalists and dissidents.
Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive
#140Some of these things raise an eyebrow and I'd like them further broken down (but in the mean time, I'm still donating): * $19 million for 50 staff - That's $338k/head on average. At face value for a nonprofit, I'd like these costs broke down as this seems excessive. There is far cheaper IT labor available outside SV. * 20 petabytes per year of bandwidth, or 20 million gigabytes, to enable voice and video calling alon…
- That's $338k/head on average. At face value for a nonprofit, I'd like these costs broke down as this seems excessive. There is far cheaper IT labor available outside SV. You get what you pay for, though. $338k/year seems like a reasonable salary for people working on something as privacy critical as Signal – just because you're working for a nonprofit doesn't mean you have to work for less competitive wages.
Also, employees cost more than just their salary.