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Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

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Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#471

Post by rany_ »

politelemon wrote: post #455
rany_ wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They used to "require" a subscription of 1$/year but it was not enforced. If you missed the deadline, nothing happened. It was basically the WinRAR model but for an online service.

That may have been an A/B testing of sorts then, because I was booted right away.

> whether you’ve been required to pay WhatsApp’s annual fee depends very much on when you joined the service, and even on what country you live in.

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

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#474

Post by nottorp »

AnonHP wrote: post #344
contact9879 wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

almost, usernames and phone number privacy are in testing now

That’s only phone number privacy from other users. Registration would still require a phone number, which is what GP seems to be unhappy about.

I don't see the point of all that encryption when the ends of a conversation are tied to publicly available info like a phone number.

Do you think $SECRET_POLICE will care that they can't decrypt my messages when they know I have exchanged said messages with a known dissident's phone number?

$SECRET_POLICE doesn't do innocent until proven guilty.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#475

Post by caeril »

leptons wrote: post #182
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/

I'd be happy to pay $1/year for signal, and I'd pay $2/year if it were decoupled from my phone number.

I'd pay much more than $2 if they offered account identifiers other than phone numbers. Trying to get a burner SIM or DID while still staying anonymous is getting increasingly difficult.

But I think it's pretty clear by now that this is a feature for FVEY IC, not a bug. FFS, they burned development resources on stickers, but abjectly refuse to offer alternative account identifiers. The standard apologist response is, "but phone numbers make adoption easier". Sure, but nobody is asking to replace the identifiers, or even to make them nondefault. We're just asking for the option. It could be hidden behind a developer mode for all I care, but it should be there.

The fact that they abjectly refuse to do it is enough to tell you about what their true motivations likely are.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#476

Post by JLCarveth »

lxgr wrote: post #303
JLCarveth wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.android.com/get-the-message/

RCS is Google's idea of a solution – a company not exactly widely known for their excellence in all things instant messaging.

Do you have a source that it was started by Google? From looking around, they support its development but it was an industry initiative, and Samsung was one of the first OEMs to support it.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#477

Post by nurple »

akprasad wrote: post #255

I just donated $10 to Signal. Here's how to do so on iPhone in less than a minute: 1. Open Signal and click on your user icon in the upper left. 2. Go to "Settings" --> "Donate to Signal". 3. Click "Donate", select your donation options, and pay with Apple Pay.

I guess maybe I'm missing the purported point of signal, attaching your phone number to use it notwithstanding, but attaching payment identity to it as well? Like, what's the point of going through the pain required to use it?

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#478

Post by frakkingcylons »

hotnfresh wrote: post #414
maxfurman wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The small ISP/phone/cable company I worked for in high school had a data center. Maybe 20 racks. It was pretty damn reliable (old-school phone infra techs knew how to make shit stay “online”). I guarantee it wasn’t above the single-digit millions to build, inflation adjusted.

That example of your small telecom company isn't really relevant here, is it? Signal needs to work well for people around the world.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#479

Post by nwellinghoff »

GuB-42 wrote: post #464
nwellinghoff wrote: post #282

Wish they provided some numbers of actual messages, type etc. per day. Seems like a good game plan would be. 1) Get off the major cloud providers that charge insane egress fees. 2) Remove SMS verification. A simple solution might be the app gives you a code and then you dial in to them and punch in the code to them. Like a reverse voice based authentication. 3) Remove voice and video calling for non donating users. 3…

Removing essential features like voice/video calling for non-paying users would be a terrible choice IMHO. This is a communication app, which means it is only useful if others use it too. And how are you going to convince others to pay for Signal when there are many free alternatives, including WhatsApp, which most people already have and while not as privacy focused as Signal, does have end-to-end encryption. If Sig…

Valid but if there is no model that is sustainable then who cares if its successful? Some trade offs will have to be made. How can they keep going if the vast majority of people don't pay? They don't have the model of "ok we are going to flip and monetize after we get to X mass". Its like a growth startup but with no end game plan.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#480

Post by morvita »

itslennysfault wrote: post #180
aalimov_ wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> stubbornly use iMessange. Personally, I prefer it over downloading yet another client, dealing with additional credentials, wondering about who can access my messages, and so on and so forth… And all that just to message the handful of people that I know who use .

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.

Good news, Apple just announced they'll start supporting RCS next year.

https://www.techradar.com/phones/iphone/breaking-apple-will-...

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