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Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

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Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#891

Post by abdullahkhalids »

andrepd wrote: post #881
abdullahkhalids wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yeah, the issue is more that there is substantial friction in paying any amount of money, especially in poorer countries with no access to e.g. banking or payment cards. I'm sure no one here, and few people even in comparatively poorer countries, would object if Signal/their messenger of choice cost 0.60$ per year to use. The problem is that making the service have a ~1$/yr price tag (as WhatsApp once had) is itself…

In Pakistan at least, sometimes you can donate to charity etc by texting a special number [1]. That subtracts some fixed amount from your prepaid mobile balance (which the vast majority of people use) or adds to your postpaid bill. I imagine its possible for some business to charge customers this way as well.

Then again, instant C2C and C2B digital payments using mobile phones is growing extremely fast in most of the global south.

[1] https://www.app.com.pk/national/pta-introduces-9999-sms-code...

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#892

Post by rglullis »

discard124 wrote: post #882
rglullis wrote: post #877

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Signal has the funding, the technical talent and the customers. They are as "open source" as it can be. The issue with them is that they want to control the platform.

Have you considered that they might have a reason for that? You act as if control has no value to their mission. Controlling the platform allows them to continue to evolve it while maintaining the convenient and spam-free user experience that users enjoy.

> You act as if control has no value to their mission.

What is their mission, exactly? Why does it require one single entity as the single pipeline for all global communications?

How many times will we have to go through the same cycle of building centralized Leviathans and see them turning against us, to understand that this is the Road to Hell?

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#893

Post by viktree »

pelasaco wrote: post #849
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..

From the same link, it seems like his compensation was much higher in all the preceding years. Not sure what changed this year, but I agree it's a bit refreshing to see. Especially since he's probably made good money throughout his career

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#894

Post by rengle »

_ugfj wrote: post #828
rengle wrote: post #820

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Trans women are not males who call themselves women, though. If you insist they are , that's denial of trans existence and that's the road to genocide. Trans women are not males who call themselves women, though. If you insist they are , that's denial of trans existence and that's the road to genocide. Apparently I was wrong on top surgeries. I will be more careful with phrasing then. However, sterilization (aka geni…

> Trans women are not males who call themselves women, though.

They are male, by definition. If they were female then they would actually be women, rather than men trying to mimic women - which is the reality of 'trans existence' for these males.

They really have no business imposing themselves in female-only spaces. Rejecting this form of male entitlement and keeping them excluded from these spaces that are not for them isn't 'genocide' by any means. That is sheer hyperbole.

> However, sterilization (aka genital surgery) still is not a thing.

Genital surgery for minors is rarer but it actually a thing that happens. For example, reality television victim Jazz Jennings was sterilised at 17 years old.

Here's another male who had his surgery at 16: https://metro.co.uk/2019/12/29/transgender-teen-who-began-tr...

And another: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/fb-6329525/WHO-JACKIE-GRE...

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#895

Post by cmiles74 »

StressedDev wrote: post #672
cmiles74 wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android's messaging app does much the same thing. My preference would be that Apple drop SMS support from Messages all-together and market it as an iOS only communication method. People with iPhones would then have to pick some alternative, perhaps they would use Signal or perhaps something else. I already have to install a handful of applications to talk to all of my friends and co-workers, at least I wouldn't have…

As an iPhone user, I am happy with messages and do not want it to drop SMS support. Note Apple created iMessage way before RCS even existed. iMessage works well and I am happy with it.

It's interesting that you mention that you like it having SMS support; do you only use this function to message Android phones? In my experience, the iPhone people I know are consistently annoyed by me and my SMS messages.

IMHO, RCS isn't a solution to anything since it still requires phone carriers to adopt it. A quick check of the internet indicates that many of these phone carriers are actually charging more to send RCS messages than SMS, making it a non-starter all around.

Maybe Google could create an iMessage-like (internet only) alternative for Android... Although it still wouldn't work with the actual Apple iMessage protocol unless Apple adopted it. IMHO they'd have better luck getting companies like Apple to interoperate if it was pre-installed and worked on all Android phones.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#896

Post by chx »

pelasaco wrote: post #846
_ugfj wrote: post #811

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Signal is competing with for profit companies for talented engineers and their talented leaders. You can't just cobble together something "good enough", this thing must be airtight given some of the dangerous situations it is used in.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#898

Post by bastawhiz »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #880
bastawhiz wrote: post #706

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tor is distributed, not federated. And it has drawbacks, like high latency and a lack of a centralized system for human-friendly names (because that would mean a system like DNS, which is centralized). As far as security goes, there's probably little benefit. E2EE doesn't get more secure because there's more encryption. The most comparable system to Tor that has practical properties I can think of is maybe ipfs, but…

Because code is law, centralized systems that grow bigger than the polity they started in are inherently problematic. See Facebook in Burma/Myanmar as one recent infamous example.

Some centralized systems. But I don't think there's any evidence to suggest that's universally true. Nor is the implication that non-centralized systems don't suffer from similar problems, or other problems which result in substantially bigger drawbacks.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#899

Post by conductr »

wg0 wrote: post #513
conductr wrote: post #509

I'm seeing all the comments about the $6m Twilio expense, but nothing commenting on how their cost per employee is $380,000 totaling $19m. I think they could optimize this easier if the will was there. I know HN is very SV/tech centric, and that number makes sense there given the run up of VC money, etc. but I'm willing to bet they could source talent from cheaper places and slash this in half; if they wanted to. Jus…

Craftsmen's compensation is a non negotiable matter IMHO. It's not someone's fault if they happen to live in a particular economic climate. The real root cause isn't the engineering or infrastructure cost. It is about people paying their fair share myself included.

I'd never advocate for unfair compensation. Only that what's fair is highly variable when the world is your potential labor pool. A lot of people and companies think or behave like only a few areas of the world produce quality software. It's absolutely false. I'd also want to question if a company full of Master Craftsmen are needed (if that's what's implied by the $380k/employee). To keep with the construction metaphor, most labor on a typical construction site is Craftsmen supervising unskilled/lower skilled labor; otherwise cost would be a major issue (more than it is already).

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#900

Post by pelasaco »

taway1237 wrote: post #857
pelasaco wrote: post #846

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

So all the programmers who work there should live on thin air? I agree that ideally the management should not be there for profit, but come on, the salaries are not even that crazy. I suspect FAANG key employees in that area easily earn multiples of that.

> Signal is competing with for profit companies for talented engineers and their

> talented leaders.

In Bay Area? I'm quite sure you get great people all around the World, or in USA, by much less.

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