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Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

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Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#761

Post by Canada »

Aachen wrote: post #376
Canada wrote: post #88

Seriously consider setting up a recurring donation if you prefer Signal. They have delivered consistently over the years. I set the $20/month back when they introduced the option. I'm curious what the breakdown of donations is. I only have 1 contact with a $10/month and 1 with a $5/month badge. Of course there could be others not displaying the badge. Signal really needs 500,000 people giving $20/month and plus the r…

20/month for every chat service I use is very steep. I'd be spending more on chat services than on mobile data + unlimited calling + landline + DSL + streaming services combined! They actual costs are apparently about 1 USD per year per user. I usually at least double (usually more) my incurred cost when the donation is optional, to cover for those who can't or won't pay, but paying 240× the cost price seems wasteful…

I'm not suggesting every chat service get donations. I'm only giving to Signal, the rest of the chat services I have to use get 0.

I'm donating more than my costs deliberately because I fully understand that most users are not going to contribute money, full stop. I need those users though, because they are the people I want to privately communicate with. So the obvious thing to do is pay for as many other users as I can. If there's 50M monthly active users, and if 1% of them are like me and highly value Signal, then each of us 1% users can pay $20/month and cover the entire operation. Then the contributions of the super rich donors can be saved to rebuild the war chest.

$20/month is nothing to me considering the value I get. I understand that most won't feel that way, which is why I'm only appealing to those who do feel as I do to just get that recurring donation going now.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#762

Post by epups »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #698
wpietri wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why should Wikipedia do new stuff? Because it's not perfect yet? The point of Wikipedia is not to have some servers ticking over. The project has a vision: "Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge." I agree it's not ok for them to lie, and am bothered enough by their dubious fundraising tactics that I stopped donating. But that's a totally separate concern than…

> The project has a vision: "Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge." That's not their vision. Not only do they require entries to be notable, they'll remove information from articles that are, in their editorial judgment, too long. Neither action is compatible with the goal of sharing the sum of all knowledge.

It is, because removing this barrier to entry and editorial power would lead to spam and SEO bullshit, which arguably already exists. Knowledge does not equal amount of content.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#763

Post by jefozabuss »

darthrupert wrote: post #758
Drblessing wrote: post #710

2022 Salaries for those interested: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/824... Compensation Key Employees and Officers Base Related Other Jim O'leary (Vp, Engineering) $666,909 $0 $33,343 Ehren Kret (Chief Technology Officer) $665,909 $0 $8,557 Aruna Harder (Chief Operating Officer) $444,606 $0 $20,500 Graeme Connell (Software Developer) $444,606 $0 $35,208 Greyson Parrelli (Software Developer) $…

I'll ask the question you're implying out loud. Why does an organization with about 50 employees need 4 C-level executives, totalling about 2M compensation per year? Or perhaps it's 7 C-level executives (3 hiding under the "Software developer" title) totalling about 3,7M compensation per year? I'm absolutely not donating money to such a thing without an answer to this question. As a counterpoint, I am a member of a l…

2M in comp distributed between 4 people is not a lot at this scale in my opinion.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#764

Post by rglullis »

Barrin92 wrote: post #582
rglullis wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps it was a bad choice of words. What I mean is that they say "you don't need to trust us", yet they require you to run through them. They refuse to build their system in a decentralized way, and the more that time goes by the more the decentralized alternatives are showing they are as secure as Signal without forcing us to accept their restrictions like mandatory use of phone numbers for authentication.

> "you don't need to trust us" you literally don't. It's a fully encrypted service. The literal purpose of encryption is to move data securely through insecure or even adversarial channels . Which you can verify, it's audited and open source. They refuse to build the app in a decentralized way because decentralization is an ideological obsession that is useless in this context, and because centralized organizations c…

> can actually ship polished software that works for normal people and move quickly

They can ship it, because they got a fuckton of money. But apparently they can not maintain it, because now they are crying about how expensive it is to run it.

Signal is acting like a sprint runner who signed up for a Marathon and wants to be carried out to the finish line after showing how much faster he was in the first mile. That's what I think is dishonest here.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#765

Post by goodpoint »

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/

Very reasonable with only 40 million users?! It's shockingly expensive.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#766

Post by kupfer »

daedalus_j wrote: post #603
sneak wrote: post #454

It’s somewhat puzzling that Signal doesn’t let me donate with Mobilecoin.

Tells you how much faith they have in that "feature".... I'd love to see some usage numbers on it, and perhaps removal of it when it turns out the usage is near zero... (Or maybe I'm totally wrong, which would be interesting too!)

Yeah, you only ever hear the naysayers. So second voice to combat that: I like the integration and use it with (admittedly few) selected friends to split bills. And I think it fits signals mission.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#767

Post by goodpoint »

tapoxi wrote: post #14
java-man wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, decouple Signal user identity from the phone number.

This will probably never happen. One of the reasons WhatsApp blew up is because using a phone number as your source of identification means there's much less friction in the signup flow. No username/password to create and your social graph is already there in your contact list. My mom was able to get our entire extended family on Signal without my involvement, which is a testament to how easy that is.

It has nothing to do with friction...

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#768

Post by goodpoint »

lxgr wrote: post #250
tapoxi wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This will probably never happen. One of the reasons WhatsApp blew up is because using a phone number as your source of identification means there's much less friction in the signup flow. No username/password to create and your social graph is already there in your contact list. My mom was able to get our entire extended family on Signal without my involvement, which is a testament to how easy that is.

Nobody is demanding them to stop supporting phone numbers as identifiers/verification methods. I'm not mad at all if somebody prefers using their phone number and not having a password for a service – just give me the option to use my email address and/or a username. There are too many "phone number only" services out there these days.

> Nobody is demanding them to stop supporting phone numbers as identifiers/verification methods.

Plenty of people are, and for good reasons.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#769

Post by rglullis »

Canada wrote: post #753
rglullis wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fail to understand the point of supporting an organization that is completely against self-sovereignty like Signal is. Why would I want to pay someone to develop something that traps me into their platform and does not offer a way out?

Great, you go ahead and get all your friends in family using Matrix. I'll join you there when all that is sorted out and it's practical to get my lawyers and doctors and accountants and friends and family onboard. Until then, we'll keep using Signal.

First, you talk like Signal never had any issue with usability or functionality, which is far from the truth. Signal amount of bugs and security issues with their client is notorious, and the insistence of requiring phone numbers is just a silly "let them have cake approach" that is conveniently ignored for too long.

Second, are you hedging your bets and supporting Matrix or XMPP as well, or will you only encourage people to "donate" to the platform that you happen to have picked already?

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#770

Post by jillesvangurp »

Drblessing wrote: post #710

2022 Salaries for those interested: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/824... Compensation Key Employees and Officers Base Related Other Jim O'leary (Vp, Engineering) $666,909 $0 $33,343 Ehren Kret (Chief Technology Officer) $665,909 $0 $8,557 Aruna Harder (Chief Operating Officer) $444,606 $0 $20,500 Graeme Connell (Software Developer) $444,606 $0 $35,208 Greyson Parrelli (Software Developer) $…

Aside from the salaries, which I agree are a problem, I think there are a lot of architectural issues that are both costly and not so secure.

> We use third-party services to send a registration code via SMS or voice call in order to verify that the person in possession of a given phone number actually intended to sign up for a Signal account. Simple solution, go distributed.

6M $ for that. Stop doing that. What do dictators control? Mobile phone networks and other infrastructure. And, yes, they really do go after people any way they can.

This "cost" puts people into danger. Coupling identity and operator infrastructure is a critical privacy flaw. And a costly one too apparently. If your #1 goal is to be the most private solution, this cannot be tolerated to continue to be the case. Get rid of it. Your identity should be your cryptographic key.

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