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Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

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Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#311

Post by miki123211 »

munk-a wrote: post #195
cmiles74 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Messages inflexible reliance on SMS for communication to non-Apple devices is definitely an Apple issue, in my opinion. Apple has made it clear that they continue to default to SMS for non-iPhone communication solely because it's unpleasant for everyone involved.

There's apparently even "green bubble bullying"[1] of kids who have Android devices and thus have their messages appear different. In this particular way Apple is happy compromising the mental health of young people to secure a larger market share - it's awful and they deserve a lot more negative PR for it. 1. https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-apples-imessage-is-winning-...

On the other hand, I have saved many a dollar by instantly knowing that I just sent a legacy text to somebody I normally iMessage with.

My carrier charges an arm and a leg for international texting, and if distinguishing between texts and iMessages wasn't as easy as it is, I would probably have to pay hundreds in carrier bills at least once.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#312

Post by DANmode »

troupo wrote: post #269
itslennysfault wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only someone would release a universal protocol that the app's native messaging apps could utilize to eliminate the need for these 3rd party messaging apps. Oh, right, it's called RCS and Apple refuses to support it.

> Oh, right, it's called RCS and Apple refuses to support it. No one wants to support it. Even telecoms don't want to support it.

Telecoms don't even want to roll out all of the infrastructure they get paid by the government to, I don't know that their willingness to do anything is a point I'd try to stand firmly on.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#313

Post by godelski »

rodlette wrote: post #86

I'd prefer a federated solution, but XMPP doesn't yet have decent support for group chat that doesn't depend on being connected. https://xmpp.org/extensions/attic/xep-0369-0.1.html is still experimental. Bravo to Signal for being easy enough for my family to use!

Fwiw, I've seen users suggest hybrid approaches. Interestingly it could reduce some of the costs they list here and looks like a route one could take to slowly build towards a fully or hybrid federated system instead of jumping straight there. But I am unsure how much the community likes the idea and judging by that last post it doesn't seem like the mods do. But this one takes note as two users were willing to place a bounty on the feature request

https://community.signalusers.org/t/signal-airdrop/37402

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#316

Post by dexwiz »

bombcar wrote: post #258
dexwiz wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't send an sms yourself like you can an email. Instead of setting up a server, you have to work with a telco provider (an aggregator specifically). Any SMS service eventually hands off to one of these. Many SaaS SMS providers are just frontends for legacy telco services. They charge insane fees because they can, that is all there is to it. Sending mass email is still difficult. Its probably easier to pay a pro…

Maybe they should flip it on its head - get a thousand? Ten thousand? numbers that can accept SMS and tell people to "text 473843 to this number" to verify.

It's usually even more expensive to support receiving messages than sending them, beyond keywords like Unsubscribe. If you want any sort of threading its going to be extra. Also its extra for dedicated shortcodes. When you get an SMS from a random shortcode, there might be multiple companies using that code, but they mix the pools enough that its unlikely you will receive two messages from two companies from the same code. Also shortcodes are usually country/region locked. So if you want to international support, you need to buy shortcodes in multiple regions, and different regions have different telco laws. On top of that, provisioning is very manual compared to the modern cloud.

I supported a marketing platform for a while, and it was so much easier to send an email than an sms.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#317

Post by greyface- »

An entirely peer-to-peer instant messaging network, which doesn't rely on a central authority, is technically possible. A $50M/yr burn rate to implement that authority as an act of charity is simply unsustainable. Why do we insist on continuing down this path?

Attempts to decentralize or federate Signal are met with hostility. The Signal Foundation tells us that this is the only possible way; "the ecosystem is moving", and we must exist in competition with commercial offerings, rather than build something small, sustainable, and decentralized. This is great, until the AWS bill is due.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#318

Post by alternatex »

popol12 wrote: post #124

2 ideas to limit costs: Make it a 2 tier plan: free tier is text and images only, paid tier adds audio/video calls Remove the need for phone number verification I'd be happy to pay 10 bucks a year for Signal.

They do that and everyone moves to WhatsApp or Telegram. Your comment ignores the whole private chat app landscape.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#319

Post by wolverine876 »

Dunedan wrote: post #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.

Signal agrees: (from the article:)

... legacy telecom operators have realized that SMS messages are now used primarily for app registration and two-factor authentication in many places, as people switch to calling and texting services that rely on network data. In response to increased verification traffic from apps like Signal, and decreased SMS revenue from their own customers, these service providers have significantly raised their SMS rates in many locations, assuming (correctly) that tech companies will have to pay anyway.

...

These costs vary dramatically from month to month, and the rates that we pay are sometimes inflated due to “toll fraud”—a practice where some network operators split revenue with fraudulent actors to drive increased volumes of SMS and calling traffic on their network. The telephony providers that apps like Signal rely on to send verification codes during the registration process still charge their own customers for this make-believe traffic, which can increase registration costs in ways that are often unpredictable.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#320

Post by YeBanKo »

ActorNightly wrote: post #49

Has anyone tried setting up their own Signal server? Be cool to do this, and then give all your friends the ip for truly private messaging. https://github.com/signalapp Seems like all their stuff is open source.

This can be a premium feature. Run your own server and for a little bit of money you can configure your client to use an alternative server. Client code is what make it private and secure, so you want to use their verified client even with your own server.
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