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Session is shutting down in 90 days

getsession.org

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Re: Session is shutting down in 90 days

#151

Post by Ms-J »

its-summertime wrote: post #101
Ms-J wrote: post #74

Session was Australian based which means they would have to do all sorts of horrible things when asked by the government, such as even letting police impersonate users... I just checked and they claim to have moved their infra to Switzerland. There are many other issues, some I've forgotten about since I would never trust it in the first place. They also require a phone number even! Seeing them go, I feel neutral. It…

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/nov/05/sessi... they moved more than their infra > They also require a phone number even! "You don’t need a mobile number or an email to make an account with Session." - https://getsession.org/faq#identity-protection

From your link, it explains that they have to Switzerland:

"The developer of Session, an encrypted messaging app, has moved operations to Switzerland as ‘being in Australia just threatened our credibility as a privacy tool’."

What else in particular are you talking about?

With the phone number, I may have not remembered correctly for this particular software. If I could edit my comment, I would add a note.

But when going to the FAQ link I remembered how bad this piece of software was especially promoting cryptocurrency. I would never want a messenger to promote crypto, such a "Signal"

Edit: used different quote from the article

Re: Session is shutting down in 90 days

#152

Post by anonymous908213 »

coldpie wrote: post #145
a13n wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nah. we never had a business plan and are still going strong 11 years later. 99.999% is a gross exaggeration of reality. we’ll never actually have this data, but I bet there isn’t much correlation if any between having a business plan and being successful. have you started a successful business?

I suspect you did actually have a business plan, even if it was informal & just in your head. Something like "based on my experience in this line of work, I can charge about $X for Y service, if I get Z sales at that price, it's a viable business, otherwise I'll try to do ABC instead." It's light on details, but that's still a business plan, you had a plan to bring income in. That's fine. Not having a business plan l…

> "we'll release a free thing, have no way to generate income, lose money for a few years, and then beg for a million dollars." That's not a business plan. That's a waste of your time & your users' time.

This is literally the foundation story of numerous billion-dollar businesses. In fact OpenAI managed to beg their way into a trillion dollars after losing money offering no kind of product for many years. It sounds like it's just a business plan that you don't like very much.

Off the top of my head, I believe Twitter, Youtube, Discord, Reddit, Imgur each had no monetization at all for the first 3~5 years of their existence. Or more recently there was uv, that write-it-in-Rust Python package manager that had no avenue for monetization but received millions in investment funding a team working on it full-time until successfully getting bought out by OpenAI.

Re: Session is shutting down in 90 days

#153

Post by stronglikedan »

coldpie wrote: post #14

I feel like a crazy person for having to write this, but: if you are starting a business (yes, non-profits are businesses), then you need to have a business plan. If you launch a business and you have not done the work to have a business plan, then in 99.999% of situations, your business will fail. A business plan includes market & competitive research, a revenue plan based on that research that includes realistic pr…

I'd wager most still successful businesses weren't started with much of a plan, especially if they offer services instead of products. I started mine by paying less than a hundred bucks to incorporate on a whim, and was successful for many years. The only reason I shuttered it is because it led me to programming and I went off in that direction instead. There are many such examples everywhere you look, so it's not just anecdotal. I'd say that all one needs is determination and a vision.

Re: Session is shutting down in 90 days

#154

Post by Ms-J »

Youden wrote: post #115
Ms-J wrote: post #74

Session was Australian based which means they would have to do all sorts of horrible things when asked by the government, such as even letting police impersonate users... I just checked and they claim to have moved their infra to Switzerland. There are many other issues, some I've forgotten about since I would never trust it in the first place. They also require a phone number even! Seeing them go, I feel neutral. It…

No legal mechanism with such breadth exists in Australia. There was a great deal of overblown media reporting but the law [0] makes it explicitly clear that any request that requires a "systemic weakness", "systemic vulnerability" or anything of the like is null and void. Those terms are defined [1]. Note that it doesn't say the government can't request such a thing, it says that such a request "has no effect". It's…

"No legal mechanism with such breadth exists in Australia." No.

See: https://lowendbox.com/blog/australian-police-will-soon-have-...

"These new warrant powers include:

1. Data disruption 2. Expansion of targeted devices to include all devices a suspect uses or might use 3. Account takeovers"

Australia is extremely draconian.

Re: Session is shutting down in 90 days

#155

Post by [deleted] »

PinkSheep wrote: post #142
worldsavior wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're taking about paying for full time developers.

Where am I reading this wrongly? > approximately $65,000 in donations. This is enough to maintain critical Session infrastructure for the next 90 days. We are extremely grateful for the support Session has received from the community, but unfortunately this is not sufficient to retain full-time developers. As a result, all paid staff and developers will have their final working day on April 9, 2026. After this date,…

[deleted]

Re: Session is shutting down in 90 days

#156

Post by coldpie »

anonymous908213 wrote: post #152
coldpie wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect you did actually have a business plan, even if it was informal & just in your head. Something like "based on my experience in this line of work, I can charge about $X for Y service, if I get Z sales at that price, it's a viable business, otherwise I'll try to do ABC instead." It's light on details, but that's still a business plan, you had a plan to bring income in. That's fine. Not having a business plan l…

> "we'll release a free thing, have no way to generate income, lose money for a few years, and then beg for a million dollars." That's not a business plan. That's a waste of your time & your users' time. This is literally the foundation story of numerous billion-dollar businesses. In fact OpenAI managed to beg their way into a trillion dollars after losing money offering no kind of product for many years. It sounds l…

Those are actually all pretty good examples of what I'm talking about, yeah. Investment money is not income, it is debt. It has to be paid back some time, or else your business will close. So the users who came to depend on the business will get boned when the business either closes or drastically changes as they find a business model.

OpenAI, for example, is not profitable as far as I know. I think the users they have now will be in for a rude awakening once they have to come up with a business model in order to pay back their investors. Startups that don't have a business model and get bought also regularly get shut down shortly later, leaving users stranded, look at Nest or Keybase for example off the top of my head.

Re: Session is shutting down in 90 days

#157

Post by [deleted] »

coldpie wrote: post #156
anonymous908213 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "we'll release a free thing, have no way to generate income, lose money for a few years, and then beg for a million dollars." That's not a business plan. That's a waste of your time & your users' time. This is literally the foundation story of numerous billion-dollar businesses. In fact OpenAI managed to beg their way into a trillion dollars after losing money offering no kind of product for many years. It sounds l…

Those are actually all pretty good examples of what I'm talking about, yeah. Investment money is not income, it is debt. It has to be paid back some time, or else your business will close. So the users who came to depend on the business will get boned when the business either closes or drastically changes as they find a business model. OpenAI, for example, is not profitable as far as I know. I think the users they ha…

[deleted]

Re: Session is shutting down in 90 days

#158

Post by bsaul »

oofbey wrote: post #66
bjord wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

does it? have you been trying to use signal while disconnected from the internet?

I had a friend who complained about this too. I never understood it. She had a really cheap old android phone. Maybe that’s the issue?

nope, iphone here, and quite recent. But it's not just me, all the people i communicate with on this app have the same kind of problems. With a group of friends we even had a totally weird ordering of messages, making the conversation quite absurd.

There's something deeply wrong with the way signal delivers messages...

Re: Session is shutting down in 90 days

#159

Post by KellyCriterion »

stronglikedan wrote: post #153
coldpie wrote: post #14

I feel like a crazy person for having to write this, but: if you are starting a business (yes, non-profits are businesses), then you need to have a business plan. If you launch a business and you have not done the work to have a business plan, then in 99.999% of situations, your business will fail. A business plan includes market & competitive research, a revenue plan based on that research that includes realistic pr…

I'd wager most still successful businesses weren't started with much of a plan, especially if they offer services instead of products. I started mine by paying less than a hundred bucks to incorporate on a whim, and was successful for many years. The only reason I shuttered it is because it led me to programming and I went off in that direction instead. There are many such examples everywhere you look, so it's not ju…

You know, bra, at Sandhill Road offices we call this "to make a pivot to challenge more sustainable goals" or so ;-)

Re: Session is shutting down in 90 days

#160

Post by ergocoder »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #148
ergocoder wrote: post #139

I've built many apps throughout the years. One thing that I've learned is that privacy is a secondary concern. It's never a primary one. If your app's main differentiation is privacy, it won't sell. Users just don't care about it that much.

Inauthentic activity benefits from privacy though. Inauthentic activity is a primary use case of ChatGPT, which is way more successful than anything you've ever made. Do you think kids using ChatGPT to cheat on homework would care if their chats were "private" but educators could check if submitted essays matched generated content? Uh, yes. So privacy isn't as simple of an idea as you think it is, and is certainly ex…

It's a telling that you picked an example where one user could access another user's private info in an unauthorized way. No famous app does that.

When I say privacy, I mean supporting the company promises a stronger privacy mechanism e.g. run locally, e2e encryption where the company itself cannot access your private info. This is the case for Session.

It turns out most users are okay with you promising not to use/access their private info for other means. That's already sufficient. Then, other factors e.g. usefulness are more important.

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