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Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

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Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#841

Post by illiac786 »

serial_dev wrote: post #815
illiac786 wrote: post #732

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they did not "make it required", Signal was just never developed to support anything else for username/registration. Which is what they have now almost corrected.

sounds required to me.

It's wording then. Making something required sounds like an artificial limitation whereas implementing support for usernames requires a lot of work, it's not like they commented out a couple of lines on purpose.

What is required at the moment is any phone number, not your phone number. You can use a phone booth even.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#842

Post by Vinnl »

_ugfj wrote: post #811
darthrupert wrote: post #758

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I find this hypocritical. C executives of tech orgs with world class products often have eight figures compensation -- if not from salary then from stock options. I do not see any excess here. You need to pay to compete.

And you get a world-class service that a lot of people can use for free and keeps their communication private in return. I'll happily keep donating for that.

I'm sure there are some costs that they could theoretically cut without consequence. Because the same holds for any other product I buy.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#843

Post by SamoyedFurFluff »

rengle wrote: post #820
chx wrote: post #816

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> safeguarding of children against mutilation and sterilisation, I am so, so tired. None of that happens. GnRH analogues are commonly used in gender affirming care, these are reversible. Surgery is not done on minors. > the protection of women's single-sex spaces, Predatory men have absolutely no problems finding opportunities to predate on women. This made up crap need not happen. You are parroting sound bites on is…

> Surgery is not done on minors. Sadly, this is not true. See for example this paper on 'gender-affirming' mastectomies, where the cohort included girls as young as 12 years old: https://journals.lww.com/annalsplasticsurgery/Abstract/2022/... Also this article from Reuters on rates of 'gender-affirming treatment' in children, from health insurance data, which shows that girls as young as 13 are receiving 'top surgery…

Idk man, I think this shit should be between the trans person and their doctor. We already pierce the ears and rip the foreskin off babies, and minors can get boob jobs and nose jobs already. Minors get all manner of drugs prescribed. If a doctor thinks some treatment is appropriate for a kid, okay. If it turns out to be medical malpractice we have the court system for that.

Also, I disagree that men in women’s bathrooms is inherently predatory. Frankly, this discriminates against fathers of young children because often one has to bring a daughter into the bathroom or change their infants diaper. Also, the bathroom thing is super weird, like how are you gonna enforce this in a non imposing, non disregarding of boundary way? Already butch women experience harassment for not performing femininity, and there’s news articles where nosy weirdos harass them in bathrooms…

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#844

Post by Vinnl »

hgomersall wrote: post #524
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.

There doesn't seem to be a way to pay annually, which I'd prefer to a monthly payment. £5/month is just a little high, but I'd merrily pay half that or £30/year.

There are two forms at https://signal.org/donate/, the second one lets you set a yearly donation at a custom amount (and both forms a monthly donation at a custom amount).

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#845

Post by Vinnl »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #701
chimeracoder wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? Your payment info is not connected to your account. https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360031949872-Do...

The suggestion here is to use your iPhone to pay through Apple Pay. Does Apple have any records connecting your recurring Apple Pay payment to your iPhone's phone number?

If you want to avoid that you can also donate through https://signal.org/donate/.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#846

Post by pelasaco »

_ugfj wrote: post #811
darthrupert wrote: post #758

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I find this hypocritical. C executives of tech orgs with world class products often have eight figures compensation -- if not from salary then from stock options. I do not see any excess here. You need to pay to compete.

> I do not see any excess here. You need to pay to compete.

What you mean with pay to compete? The goal of Signal to exist is to offer a privacy oriented chat app. Non-profit companies serve a propose, and people not aligned with that, shouldn't be working there in the first place. If you join a non-profit to make money, you are doing it wrong.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#847

Post by pelasaco »

"We estimate that by 2025, Signal will require approximately $50 million dollars a year to operate—and this is very lean compared to other popular messaging apps that don’t respect your privacy."

Kind of Exaggeration to say that the other popular messaging apps don't respect your privacy.. all of them do, some more, other less, just not all of them have it as their main feature.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#848

Post by Aissen »

crossroadsguy wrote: post #715
Aissen wrote: post #97

The cloud tax is crazy (especially bandwidth). Pretty sure Signal has reached the scale where they would be cheaper by building their infra, maybe starting with the most expensive (storage + bandwidth), and then doing others. SMS is (unfortunately) core to the product, so I'm not certain how they could make it cheaper, while retaining the same properties (user+pass registration would be a nightmare for spam and chang…

Is it not that they’re buying something resistance as well by buying from large infra providers if big adversaries like state actors start pushing hard? I also think SMS and phone numbers are core, but they must provide a way to communicate without use of phone numbers being kept completely separate from phone numbers even when registration is needed using phone numbers.

The usernames are coming (alpha was announced), but it won't reduce cost since the account is still phone number-based.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#849

Post by pelasaco »

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'm kind of happy to don't see Moxie with such rockstar salary as for instance the CTO one..

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#850

Post by sonicanatidae »

mardifoufs wrote: post #689
sonicanatidae wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, shafting customers as hard and fast as you can is the current business model. What are they going to do? Move to 1 or 2 remaining competitors with the exact same business model?

Most of that cost is literally coming from sms outside the us though. The rates for us sms are much lower than almost anywhere else.

I'll have to do some research here. Prices in the US for bandwidth, phone services, etc. are insane.
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