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Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

signal.org

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Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#321

Post by Symbiote »

maxfurman wrote: post #266
Rastonbury wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone know much does it become worth it to build your own? They spend around $3-4m on storage and bandwidth

Data centers cost billions. Signal, and pretty much everyone else who isn't already in the data center business, is far away from breakeven on that.

There are several steps between using AWS and building a datacentre.

- Using similar services from cheaper cloud providers

- Renting VMs

- Renting whole servers

- Renting rack space + power

- Renting larger spaces (many racks, or part or all of a whole floor)

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#323

Post by lxgr »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #252
renewiltord wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how many people paid the $5 for WhatsApp back in the day. It gave you nothing but you were able to do it. I think I did.

Whatsapp was asking for $1/year [1] [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jan/18/whatsapp-...

I've been using WhatsApp when the nominal $1/year fee was still around, but somehow never ended up being actually charged, and I don't know anyone that did.

It's possible that they were only enforcing it in some regions, though.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#324

Post by renewiltord »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #252
renewiltord wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how many people paid the $5 for WhatsApp back in the day. It gave you nothing but you were able to do it. I think I did.

Whatsapp was asking for $1/year [1] [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jan/18/whatsapp-...

The price changed a few times but they definitely had a lifetime thing once.

All pricing was entirely optional

Here's one reference to a different price (can't find lifetime except for people complaining that Facebook didn't honor it on original ToS)

https://www.wired.com/2011/11/whatsapp-messenger-app/

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#325

Post by fmajid »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #268
V__ wrote: post #36

Signal had 40 million active users in 2021 [1]. With 14 million in infra cost, that comes to .35 per user/year. Total expenses are about 33 million, so about .825 per user/year. All in all that seems very reasonable. [1] https://www.businessofapps.com/data/signal-statistics/

Mastodon org + Mastodon.social also have costs of 0.6 EUR/year, though they have two orders of magnitude less users [1]. This is really what most social media costs. These rates are even payable by many in poorer countries. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38117385

IIRC WhatsApp used to charge $1 per year

https://venturebeat.com/mobile/whatsapp-subscription/

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#326

Post by olejorgenb »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #262
exabrial wrote: post #51

Some 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…

> I'd drop these features if possible, or give them to donors. They can't really do that, it deters adoption of something with a network effect. The real issue here is that direct connections have privacy implications (maybe you don't want the other party to know your IP address), so they relay everything. If they could solve that they could save a lot of money. For example, detect if the user is connected via a know…

Making it so that only one party need to have a pro account might help a bit

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#327

Post by lxgr »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #263
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they very early on established direct-connection infrastructure for sending SMS, meaning that they have a marginal cost of literally $0.00/message in most markets. I am very, very interested to understand how that works, because without more detail or sources I'm calling bullshit. I definitely understand how Twitter could have greatly reduced their per-message fee with telecom providers, but at the end of the day T…

Not who you are responding to, but my guess is that it was all fixed costs. They spend $20mm (or whatever) to maintain access, and maintain infrastructure and they get to send as many SMS messages as they want. So sending 1 costs the same as sending a 10 million. It isn't that they are free to send, its that they are charged for access to the system, but aren't charged per message.

> spend $20mm (or whatever) to maintain access, and maintain infrastructure and they get to send as many SMS messages as they want.

This is not how SMS pricing works in many, if not, most countries.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#328

Post by RunSet »

pluto_modadic wrote: post #31
RunSet wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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] [0] https://getsession.org/ [1] https://www.stephendiehl.com/blog/signal.html

Session depends on the Loki blockchain, so I dispute point 1.

I don't consider Session to "bundle" the Loki blockchain or the Oxen network in any sense.

Here is more information about what I meant when I used the term "bundled".

https://www.techopedia.com/definition/4240/bundled-software

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#330

Post by explaininjs »

rezonant wrote: post #244
explaininjs wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Flow: > Service A => User: Please Enter Your Phone Number and Email > Service A => Clearinghouse: Please verify phone number XXX wants to sign up for an account with us > Clearinghouse => User (SMS): Please respond with the Email you used at signup to confirm you want an account with Service A Later... > Service B => User: Please Enter Your phone number and Email > Service B => Clearinghouse: Please verify phone nu…

This does not reduce the overall cost, it just shifts it to the clearinghouse. Who pays the clearinghouse so that they can cover their own exorbitant SMS costs?

You miss the crux of it: the second time onward the clearing houses uses email to authenticate the previously-SMS-verified account.
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