Reminder that Signal server source code is not fully released and the app is heavily dependent on google services to operate. Signal also takes measures against third party or unofficial apps.
Whatever you say about privacy Signal is not an ally of user freedom.
I had actually considered donating to Signal, but the addition of Moxie's crypto scheme to the app scared me completely away.
Signal kind of hits a sweet spot of usability and security, but it's incredibly tenuous and I don't trust the company to hold my interests at heart. It seems like we should be able to do better.
Well your signal client performs SGX remote attestation before sending any contact data to ensure that the server codebase matches a valid release. So if they're not running the published source, your client will refuse to share your contact information and social graph. Note that messages are e2e encrypted on the client side, so they don't enter into it.
These are not requirements for most messaging app users. I just want secure messaging. I don’t care if it’s open or interoperable. WhatsApp if it was run by a non profit.
Most messaging app users don't really care about encryption either. Most (or at least a large minority) probably wouldn't mind if their messages were used to 'deliver ads more suitable for you'.
It doesn't mean these aren't important issues. Until Signal drops the phone number requirement (nothing beats that for efficient user tracking), allows desktop use without requiring a smartphone anywhere in the process, open sources their server code, and allows for third party clients in a reasonable way; I agree with dfkajglag: not yet an ally of user freedom.
> Until Signal drops the phone number requirement (nothing beats that for efficient user tracking), allows desktop use without requiring a smartphone anywhere in the process
I could handle the closed server for enabling me to use IM to talk to people. But these two points are what make it a non-starter for me.
The phone number requirement is the only thing making Signal remotely close to usable for the wider public. Similarly, non-phone messaging is niche in the extreme. Unusable software is not an ally of user freedom.
The actual problem with Signal is that they took US State Department funding. That doesn't mean it's an op necessarily, but suspicious nonetheless.
Why? If someone wants to use a phone number for their identifier, fine. But make it optional. If I join Signal with another alias (free-form string perhaps) then they could just add me via that. Not really harder than using my phone number.
> Why? If someone wants to use a phone number for their identifier, fine. But make it optional
Network effects.
If you’re only findable via custom handle versus the phone number your network already has, you’ve reduced the network’s value to your contacts. Put another way, if I join a messaging service and it says two of my contacts are on it (but many more may be), that’s close to a non-starter.
I'm fine with people not finding me automatically. If Signal wants to keep the low-resistance method of bulk-checking your contact's phone numbers, fine. Just give me the choice of joining without it.
That’s a private gain at the network’s cost. For a challenger, their decision to bar that albeit limited form of free-riding is perfectly rational. For a dominant network, I am much more sympathetic to the call for anonymity.
Why would messengers without phone number collection not be usable by anyone with a smartphone?
Even if that was the case, " it's strictly less usable than WhatsApp" is not true, because other messengers can provide other quality of life features.
" That means in practice, it's unusable." is not true either. Remove "Status" support from WhatsApp and you get strictly less usable than WhatsApp. Still, it is not unusable.
Signal is pretty close to being strictly less usable than WhatsApp btw.
People can request to write you without being in your contacts.
I have received several spam messages this week in this way.
Imagine how much more with a lower barrier to entry
If it's optional, then there is more than one way to identify users. For a non-technical user, that means they have to make a choice and understand that choice, as opposed to just always using a phone number.
Unfortunately, you can't simply choose.
Messaging apps that don't interoperate inherently create forces to use their app if you have contacts you want to reach on that app
The most people don’t understand their own requirements. For example before Apple’s privacy features, Facebook (Meta) could try to guess the message contents with certain probablity based on other app usage. (Facebook trackers on different apps and cross-app tracking)
> Whatever you say about privacy Signal is not an ally of user freedom.
Good reminder for those that don't know, but did anyone ever claim otherwise? From the very start, releasing the source code was meant exclusively as a way to ensure trust == security. It was never about software freedom - the only freedom the devs mentioned was freedom of speech (encryption and censorship-resistence).
The “next-generation” text messaging standard to replace SMS/MMS. Higher quality images, read receipts, etc. I believe it also supports some form of encryption.
Interesting, I'm surprised to find Google as a big promoter of this, doesn't this go against their walled garden approach if there is a universal messaging infrastructure?
I'd argue that $5/month is quite high. Not because Signal isn't useful, but because the actual incurred cost per user is much, much lower. Of course, not everyone is going to pay.
But if Signal were to ask users to pay, say $10 per year, i'm sure there'd be a lot more payers.
If you lower the ask, you'll get more people to pay, but will it lead to more revenue in total?
In my experience, I don't think so. It's really hard to get users to pay for a free app. If you've gotten them over the activation energy required, it usually works better to ask for more. Users who contribute less also tend to churn more and cause more support burden. So you don't need just to convert 6x more at $10 / yr vs. $60 / yr but more like 10x. And 10x is really, really hard to do, ime. Again, the main thing you fight is getting users to pay anything at all.
For users willing to donate at all, the difference between (say) $2 and $5 might not be that much. Asking for more might therefore actually maximize the return.
All other users probably wouldn't donate regardless of whether it's $1 or less, so why bother considering them in your model. (edit) Offering an $1 option would just get you 0 of these users, and possibly lower the returns of the otherwise-$5-donaters above.
Also, maybe they have fixed costs per transaction? If they have to pay, say $0.50 per (totally made up), that would eat up 50% of a $1 contribution, but only 10% of a $5 one. It wouldn't make much sense to go through the trouble of soliciting donations if they lost too much of it to fees.
I'm in a third world country and even I would contribute $10 a year. I already contribute to Wikipedia on occasion. Making it monthly feels like too much of an obligation.
This was quite debunked last time - they do have reserves because in case something really bad happens (eg. people stop donating), they don’t want to go down instantly. I really don’t see how having a few years worth of reserves a bad thing - people really held open-source/non-profit companies to impossible standards.
Debunked... how? Can you link to this "debunking"?
>they do have reserves because in case something really bad happens (eg. people stop donating), they don’t want to go down instantly. I really don’t see how having a few years worth of reserves a bad thing - people really held open-source/non-profit companies to impossible standards.
This was addressed in the article.
>The WMF’s financial independence is clearly not at any risk. So what is going on? The official answer is that the WMF thinks you can never have too much money put aside for a rainy day. The WMF also has high-flying, global plans to “become the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge” by 2030. It says it wants to create “knowledge equity”—a world where people everywhere will have as much access to information in their own language as a first-world citizen—and that this will require continuous budget increases. In all of these endeavors, it is aided by the discovery that it has a money tap in Wikipedia, built through the work of volunteers, that it can open whenever it pleases.
The article isn't just decrying wikimedia building a massive reserve, it's decrying them massively expanding their scope.
Donation drives aren’t misleading. Donation drives don’t use shadow profiles. Donation drives don’t impact content. Donation drives don’t convince my grandma that she needs to send the IRS Target gift cards.
Right, they just install some ads and then next thing you know they’re trying to optimize page views and mysteriously the articles get split into multiple pages and the site gets worse and worse over time.
On top of that, the fact that they could implement ads is no reason to not contribute to them right now.
Running ads would make them beholden to advertisers. Though I would say don't contribute to Wikipedia because it has enough money to fund itself. What you are actually donating to is Wikimedia, which may or may not be doing things you want to donate too. Similar to how donating to Firefox is actually donating to Mozilla, who may or may not do anything you consider useful with it.
For what it is and how it contributes to me daily I don't believe it's high. $5/month for the peace of mind Signal provides is something I can make a case for. I subscribe to the $10/month level - because everyone in my circle uses it, and I pushed many of them in that direction. I want it to succeed, I want it to continue to improve, I want it to be available. I know I spend more than $10/month on other things that could easily be argued are far less useful than Signal.
That being said I do think there's value in a $1/month option, because that shouldn't be hard to rationalize. If something that's ad-free, operationally simple, and provides an improved level of privacy for it's users - one that requires humans and services to operate and be maintained - and still that can't be rationalized at $1/month, then the end user doesn't value what Signal is or can offer. Never mind the tradeoff one makes for "free" alternatives.
I get your argument but remember a lot of users aren't in the united states.
In India, Amazon prime is around $1.5/ month. Same $2.5 for Netflix mobile only basic plan.
My point is, $5/month might sound reasonable for most folk in the us but outside that, with purchasing power greatly reduced to a factor of 1:80 for example with India and USA conversion rate, these sound very expensive.
So my question is, should I pay netflix the privilege to enable me to not pirate because its easier or pay double to signal for something like matrix can give for free or self hosted at my own cost?
I don't pay for any of the said services because I find those prices too much so there is no way I could be bothered to use signal and pay for it.
I would rather set up a matrix server at a lowendbox vps, pay for annual subscription and get all my friends over. I pay for fun of learning about stuff, managing it and knowing I control the data
Completely understand where you're coming from and the cost implications. I'm curious about your position on Amazon Prime. It's a loss leader so you're compelled to spend more at Amazon. Are you spending more with Amazon to rationalize the Prime subscription? That's the goal and why they offer it.
You also state...
> I would rather set up a matrix server at a lowendbox vps
...and my guess here is that you're going to spend roughly $2-5/month doing this anyway. Plus your hours invested. This is squarely why I'm willing to donate to Signal via my contribution. There's value in someone making sure that this works for me and those I communicate with on Signal. I manage and control far too many other things - so I'm also with you on having that control, knowing about alternatives and controlling my data when and where it makes sense. But I don't want to be in the business of owning a messaging platform for friends and family and Signal fills that gap in a great way.
My post was purely a positional statement and not meant to be construed as any sort of guilt trip of those who don't contribute.
my post was on cost basis. not much. other commenter says 200 rupees which is fine but its the same as netflix.
my point is, if we are doing apples and apples comparison, old free signal competed with whatsapp/telegram. now, it is competing with netflix and prime in terms of cost because whatsapp/telegram is not paid for now.
my point is, if you are paying, why not go all the way and support matrix? signal is pretty hostile towards foss ideology and building your own servers, clients and such. the idea was "diluting the brand" but now its apparent. they wanted the signal brand to remain with the official services only because then they can charge for it.
can't you pay for matrix https://element.io/personal-plans if you do not plan to deal with the hassle of selfhosting which imo many people enjoy.
i understand the network effect of signal/whatsapp/telegram because the whole number directory thing but other than that, what does it have "better" than matrix? assuming tomorrow ALL your friends and their friends of friends use matrix instead of signal, would you feel the difference?
i am not shilling for matrix in particular. this just seems to be the better free software (foss) alternative to signal shenanigans and their disdain towards foss ideology
Good relatively high-performant virtual machines can be had for $0 a month. I know of at least three different ways of getting them (all 100% legal), plus a few that don't work anymore.
> Plus your hours invested
These hours have payed many times over thanks to knowledge and experience gained from them.
> I get your argument but remember a lot of users aren't in the united states.
> In India, Amazon prime is around $1.5/ month. Same $2.5 for Netflix mobile only basic plan.
> My point is, $5/month might sound reasonable for most folk in the us but outside that, with purchasing power greatly reduced to a factor of 1:80 for example with India and USA conversion rate, these sound very expensive.
They have a currency selector. If you pick Indian rupees, the the base level is 200 rupees a month (which Google says is $2.68).
I have tried and, dude, my group will just not change from their pre-installed messaging apps, except for 2 of them. They don't care that it's more secure (arguably) or that you can pull it up on your computer (my main reason for using it), they just have no interest.
My situation is, likely, a bit different. On the familial side I required it to participate in sharing of data. Those who didn't want to use it (none) couldn't participate. Nobody really minded and when I explained why - everyone thought it made sense. I also happen to be surrounded by family who trusts each other in their respective fields and I happen to be the only one in a technical position. So, by default, my opinion has weight (good, bad or otherwise). Easy sell there and it costs all participants $0. There's about a dozen users in this group that are active.
Friends and colleagues are a different tact. I work in a space where Signal makes sense for what I do, people already get it. There are people I work with that I've incented to start using it based on Signal groups they couldn't participate in otherwise. That worked well, but bootstrapping that is the hurdle. Some didn't know what Signal was and didn't question it at all when I suggested it (probably not the best approach). Looking at my Signal "Insights" for the week and I'm at 97% encrypted messaging. The 3% is service messages being delivered via SMS and one person I've texted that I've only recently started interacting with. I've used the "I need to send you this securely" a few times, which has also worked well. In those cases, since the barrier to entry is just installing, it's rarely been met with resistance.
I'm not sure these help. I'd like to think I've trickled Signal out to hundreds of people over the years. Keep in mind when I started with this it was RedPhone/TextSecure, so it's been years. Consistency is a helpful driver.
I had some luck with a subset of friends but not all of them. A big group is still on Hangouts or whatever Google calls it now. My advice is you target 2 close friends and propose to try it out for a week. If you win them over then you can start working on more.
Software advocacy isn't easy by any means. Most people want to not shake the boat of their current habits especially since it will take effort and time to get accustomed.
I don't switch to Signal, Whatsapp, Telegram, Facebook Messenger, Discord, etc. because I have several different friend groups, family groups and people which belong to none of these groups I message with. Occasionally someone from one of the groups will try to get people to switch but the problem is none of them choose the same messaging app, so changing now puts people in the position of having to use multiple different messaging apps and remembering which they need to use for each person. It is a lot easier to stick to the common ground everyone has which in the US is your pre-installed messaging app. On the iPhone this allows you to reach everyone via either Apple's proprietary service or SMS. On Android this allows you to reach everyone via SMS or RCS. When you ask your friends to switch messaging apps you are asking them to do something which complicates their use of messaging but appears to provide no relevant benefits to them.
> I have tried and, dude, my group will just not change from their pre-installed messaging apps, except for 2 of them. They don't care that it's more secure (arguably) or that you can pull it up on your computer (my main reason for using it), they just have no interest.
How close is your group? It's probably feasible to convince best friends and family to switch, but if your group contains a lot of less close friends and acquaintances, I doubt it's possible for one person to initiate a switch.
Also, it helps if you're willing to be a bit difficult, and refuse to continue to use the old app. But that only works with people who are close enough to care about communicating with you.
Yeah, the two people I have convinced to switch are my wife and someone I know who works in tech and I've known since highschool... so a very long time, lol
This argument always comes up, and the general conclusion is that the vast, vast, vast majority of people will never willingly donate a single penny. Those that will donate typically aren't price-sensitive.
I completely agree with you and would give, say, $12/year. But there's no way I'm giving $5/month. Luckily Signal also has a "booster" one-time donation option so I'm just going to "boost" twelve bucks. Maybe I'll remember to give again next February, who knows?
A simple "pay what you want" would be superior. I'd probably do $2/month for Signal. $60/year is way too much to ask and as a result, I did one month, then cancelled. Perhaps I'll do that again in six months, but maybe not.
Firstly, Random websites tell me that each Facebook user is worth on average ~$35/year on revenue figures--no indication if that was net or gross.
So, ~$5/month gross costs is appropriate when comparing it to deferred "you are the product" and taking into account cryptographers, developers, testers, system administrators, infrastructure administrators, team leads, program leads, and adding in physical infrastructure and network interconnections.
Otherwise you're just valuing against your own perception of "how much is my disposable income", which is different between any economic zone. And that's a poor argument when some people's concept of a steak dinner is a McLaren 720s that's disposable after a month.
Secondly, there are payment processor margins to take into account. At ~$60/year on 12 payments a pre-authorized standpoint, that may be less than on 1 payment of $10. I'm not interested enough to check.
Are you really comparing the feature set of facebook to that of signal? Or what a user is worth to a business vs. what the business spends on the user? Or what journalists report vs. reality?
Threema is a better comparison. They offer a commercial, ad-free product with E2E for a one-time fee of 3.99€ in the iOS app store. They also don't sell your address book or other data. They don't even have your phone number.
If that's the case, any price is a losing proposition - since you're competing with free. Users don't do business-case analysis, they barely compare features. I'm not sure the Signal features can easily justify $5 over FB/WA/Insta.
You can also make single donations called "signal boosts". For example, I try to throw them a little bit of money every now and then but would not go to a subscription.
Those are defaulted to 4 6 12 25 60 125 but you can enter a custom amount.
This month I donated in Indian Rupees (just like I do with YouTube Premium family), every month I will pick a different currency (tbd). With YT I had to figure out an existing address in India, with Signal it seems I can pick any (even tho my number starts with +31).
I agree. I love using signal and have converted most of my friends to it, but $60/year is too high for me for a chat app. I’d pay a dollar a month, maybe two.
Anything that costs less than Netflix I'll subscribe to without thinking about it, especially if it's something like Signal that I use every day. If you don't have 5 dollars a month for them, that's fine, but I'm sure enough people do that they're doing alright.
I'd bet that they get more by asking this price from more users rather than targeting more subscribers at cheaper prices.
I think you might be talking about Brian Acton's loans to them? If so, yeah, they have to pay those off at some point, which begs the question why they took a loan in the first place. They were getting grants and things like that, so taking millions that they have to pay back, especially from a guy who sold WhatsApp to Facebook is... an interesting course of action.
I have no insights in how they use that money, but I sure hope they have not spent it already on 300 SF developer years, but rather treat it as an endowment. In the long run - spending 1-5 million every year, investing the rest - it shouldn't be too difficult to preserve the nominal value over such a long time frame.
> By the end of 2018, the loan had increased to $105,000,400, which is due to be repaid on February 28, 2068. The loan is unsecured and at 0% interest.
This is from Signal Foundation's Wikipedia. There is a schedule.
They should sell the ability of creating an account not attached to a phone number.
Pay $5, get a code that allows creating a single account, enter the code somewhere in the app to allow using a user name in place of the phone. This limits spam and, as this code can also be sent to another person, there is a way to hide the relationship between payer and final user. No need for cryptocoins, NFTs, or other stupid things.
You might be interested in the technical reasons for requiring a phone number to use Signal. Not sure if there have been any updates since this blog post.
https://signal.org/blog/secure-value-recovery/
> One challenge has been that if we added support for something like usernames in Signal, those usernames wouldn’t get saved in your phone’s address book. Thus if you reinstalled Signal or got a new device, you would lose your entire social graph, because it’s not saved anywhere else. Other messaging apps solve this by storing a plaintext copy of your address book, social graph, and conversation frequency on their servers. That way your phone can get run over by a car without flattening your social graph in those apps, but it comes at a high privacy price.
This can be solved with a backup that store the address book (but not in the cloud, please!). Signal for Android already have a safe and encrypted backup feature, I use it to keep my message history safe.
Not being forced to add a contact to the phone address book is an extra advantage, as address books are one of the first victims of spyware apps...
Also, with usernames and a desktop app, there is no reason to require a smartphone at all! Seriously, my Android phone is the least secure platform that I use at the moment (lots of proprietary stuff, spyware prone, ...)
Wait what? You specify a username and at least one user-chosen "challenge" in order to verify ownership of it -- phone number, email, password, TOTP, public key which is stored with Signal. Then when you register a new phone you verify the username exactly like you verify the phone number but with the user's challenge.
Like it's more effort, but not some intractable problem, at least stated like this.
I feel like that issue could be solved by creating a random unique say 16 digit UID that users could then add as a phone number for contacts. As long as it does not map to a real routable phone number a phone dialer won't have issues if you call it by accident. Smarter dialers like that in calyxos could recognize it for signal calls if it has a unique prefix.
They could even sell existing users UIDs so they could share their contact info without sharing their phone number if they so desired, e.g. via a website. If they charged some nominal fee users could reset their UID. Maybe with escalating prices if done in short succession to make revenue and discourage abuse.
Signal justifies not allowing usernames as (partially) an anti-spam measure and I assume they also be doing it to limit the amount of accounts created and, so, the use of server resources for which they pay. Selling these accounts solves both problems.
Also allows us to actually use Signal for groups, I don't like the idea of large groups knowing my phone number.
Requiring a phone number is literally my only complaint about Signal, I used to just use a Google Voice number but then I learned about TextNow and have been migrating away from Google as much as possible
That's true of all messaging apps besides base text messages, though, isn't it? It's not like I can send a message on facebook messenger to somebody who reads it in telegram.
It's very difficult not to be if you want truly secure messaging.
It seems unlikely that big tech and telecom corporations, whose lifeblood is personal data harvesting, or government, with surveillance states becoming the global norm, are going to agree to adopt a genuinely secure end to end encrypted messaging standard or protocol on the best devices ever to facilitate their practices.
This was early days when WhatsApp was still searching for a business model.
That business model turned out to be acquire critical mass and then be acquired, but I recall people talking about how WhatsApp was hemorrhaging money in the process.
I bought a one time boost badge on Jan 12th and got a notification 3 hours later that it had expired.
Still to this day no response from Signal support. Every message I send is either ignored or their bot auto-closes the ticket claiming my Signal version is out of date (happened both when sending an email from the BETA version of the app and from their own website without specifying any version at all)
I'd really, really like to support Signal, but unless they distance themselves from MobileCoin again, I can only assume they are in on it to a certain degree.
I just don't get all the hate for cryptocurrencies around here. I benefit from using both Brave and Signal without being subjected to (scammy) adverts, and I just ignore the cryptocurrencies (you can too!!).. For people who are willing to take the risks with MobileCoin and the like, why not give them that choice?
What is wrong with using a regulated stablecoin for donations, instead of a unregulated volatile cryptocurrency like MobileCoin that with Signal can be used to privately finance lots of terrorists, extremists and conspiracy theorists chatting amongst themselves in a group chat?
Is that why Signal has not been banned for these uses yet?
I wish so bad that the signal crypto integration would have been done better. They could have implemented a wallet and generated revenue in the hundreds of millions like metamask does.
Starting a new blockchain obviously has founder incentives which are great but it only makes sense when people feel like your contributing to the diversity of blockchains not simply copy pasting monero.
afaik they are looking at other options [1]. MobileCoin is a very shady project created only to benefit creators, only 15% of coins in circulation were sold out, the rest is kept by creators [2] Moxie has personal financial interests in MobileCoin [3]:
>A year ago, Platformer was the first to report that Signal was considering adding cryptocurrency payments to the platform, and it started with MobileCoin. Signal CEO Moxie Marlinspike has served as an adviser to the MobileCoin cryptocurrency, which is built on the Stellar blockchain and is designed to make payments as anonymous as cash.
[1] We want payments in Signal to be fast, private, and work well on mobile devices. The first payments protocol we’ve added support for is a privacy focused payments network called MobileCoin, which has its own currency, MOB. https://signal.org/blog/help-us-test-payments-in-signal/
I am fundamentally not interested in managing monthly bills for things. You won’t win me by asking for recurring donations. Just ask me for ten bucks for some one-time symbolic upgrade.
Also I’ve recently been back on the App Store for the first time in a long while. WHAT IS GOING ON?! The gall for simple, offline only apps like a little piano keyboard to want monthly fees for continued use. There isn’t even an illusion of continued feature adds or some recurring service.
We pay most of these large bills once a year and as a thank you we get a 2% discount or alternatively they don't charge us extra for each month's bill.
An insurances covers risk over time. That is a completly different thing than a little app that hardly gets any new features and doesn't require expensive server infrastructure to run.
All those times when I’ve thought I would pay for service X if it meant not dealing with shitty dark pattern Y. Signal has kept their side of the deal, so now’s the time to pony up the dough.
This and stack exchange would top the list of things I’m willing to pay for.
Has it? It kept source code outdated for a year while implementing support for an altcoin that their ex-CEO stands to profit from. All the while users were asking to implement stuff that's actually been requested for years.
I like Signal as a product but my opinion of the company making it has soured pretty substantially.
"Non profit messenger's CEO prioritizes implementing his coin to gain an estimated $150 milion, hiding the app's source code from users, ignoring all other aspects of development, so I won't donate."
You seemed to miss the part where Marlinspike got richer off of Mobilecoin, throwing the company's resources at implementing it, instead of working on the product.
My biggest worry is donationg == ties you to the messaging platform, granted that your telecom/isp and most likely operating system on phone knows you have it installed via the play/app stores is more indicative of something sinister.
then they link this paper - https://eprint.iacr.org/2019/1416.pdf which, on one level is great - they're open about the account credential scheme they wish to do.
On the other level, it's a level of complexity.
Yes, "nothing to fear, nothing to hide" and it's on your phone daily - and eh.
I also started donating €10/month. I figured that I pay a lot more for other services that I use far less often and provide me far less value, so why not pay for this. Also got me to think about this topic a bit more and write this blog post: https://canolcer.com/post/pay-for-internet-stuff/
The rationality is: I get a lot of value, so it's worth my money.
I just compare it to other services I pay for that have no free option (e.g. Netflix) but provide less value, so it's a reason for me to pay for Signal because I want them to keep existing and improve the product. Is that irrational?
I had previously donated 2$ monthly for around 1.5 years through PayPal (through their webpage) and just recently noticed the badge system.
Seeing that the minimum was 5$ left me with a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. I know, no one is forced to pay and 5$ for the service is not at all much.
But what can I say. It left a bad taste in my mouth.
Important to remember that Brian Acton recently took over from Moxie as CEO of Signal, and he was pushing for a user-funded financial model back at WhatsApp. Signal has had a donation system for a while, but it wasnt exactly explicit and I imagine had a very low conversion rate.
I think it's fair enough that Acton would want some return to his $100 million(?) Loan to Signal. But I think more than that this is about creating a business model where users sustain Signal's development and maintenance, rather than Signal sustaining itself through ad tech, just as WhatsApp should have done.
In other words, Acton is creating the app WhatsApp should have been. And that's to be applauded
Is there a market for a secure messaging app (similar to Signal) that does not rely on personally identifying information (phone numbers and emails) or is that too fringe?
Yep. Me too. The network meta-data is always present (IP, src, dst, date, time, etc.). Law enforcement could use that to find criminal actors committing crimes on the app.
But having such an app would allow law abiding individuals to communicate privately and securely without disclosing their personally identifying data to anyone.
Yes. Without an email or phone number there would be no way to do an account recovery, but perhaps some other clever solutions (allow some of your contacts to reset for you, or sign a message with your key, etc.) may be an option.
I'm happy to give my 5$/month, as I'm using Signal daily. When moving away from WhatsApp it seemed like the best option for me and my circle of friends. I can only hope that some of the money would be used to hire a developer to fix some of the issues I'm experiencing, some of which are quite annoying:
- Signal killing the whole iPad and iPhone battery in a matter of hours while running in the background, on some days
- terribly slow synchronization between phone and Desktop, catching up on a few hundred messages takes minutes
- awful UX in video calls: microphone button and camera button work in opposite ways (graying out turns one on, the other off)
- awful UX in video calls: if you have multiple people, the camera views are cut into comically wrong letterboxes, often you wont see the person at all anymore
- no giphy on the Desktop client (really, why?)
What would be the best place to voice that these issues are important to me, GitHub issues?
> - terribly slow synchronization between phone and Desktop, catching up on a few hundred messages takes minutes
I agree with everything you wrote. In principle, I'd like to support Signal but their UX is terrible for such things. Tried using it for a group and it was so painful. My phone was constantly warning me about it chewing up battery, and message sync between the desktop app was like it was using a 14.4K modem from 1994. I simply could not use it meaningfully for group messaging. Ultimately we went back to Whatsapp. But hey, at least they fixed the Fisher Price background colours for group messages.
Here in India, everyone uses Whatsapp. There was a brief time during the Whatsapp terms of service brouhaha that a bunch of people I know said they'd move to Signal, and they've all slowly moved back to Whatsapp because that's what everyone in the country uses. Seriously, it's practically infrastructure here.
Add to the list the inability to effectively "mute" busy chats in a way where they don't continuously bubble up to the top. At least on Android, you can only pin 4 chats, I would really like to be able to pin as many as I want, effectively defining my own order of chats regardless of chronology.
I decided a few years ago that Signal was the closest thing to a good cross-platform messaging client that mortals could be expected to use. I sent an email to my most frequently texted contacts asking them to consider installing it and using it.
It’s not a huge cross-section of my friends and family that uses it, but I message a portion of my social network graph every day.
I was waiting a long time for the possibility of easily paying for signal. This reminded me that I should also start to pay for my FOSS password manager. Both are easily worth a few bucks a month and I couldn't live without them.
I always surprises me how few people are willing to pay $5 a month for a piece of software they use everyday, but will gladly spend $3 a day on a Starbucks Coffee or happily drop $8 on a single beer at bar.
Happily giving $10/mo. for this important Internet resource. That goes for Wikipedia too. If we want nice things those of us that can afford it should contribute. imho.
If a non-profit organization like Signal (whose goal is to protect free expression and privacy) were to offer a service with integrated messaging, contacts, and calendars that synchronize reliably over devices , I know of multiple teams that would love to leave their existing provider of those services -- and they are willing to pay a nice annual fee per user.
There is real value to signal. I am debating contributing myself now that it appears to be a more commonly used application. As long as its not mandatory, I think it should be fine. I am saying that specifically because it was hard enough to 'lure' my family and friends there. They may not see the same value I do.
Thanks for the friendly reminder to donate. Signal needs to stick around. I am also open to seeing some ads on the platform if that's what it takes to keep it alive and well.
I don’t mind a subscription model provided it’s a very useful application with few competitors in terms of features. $5 each month is nothing in the grander scheme of things.
Signal Foundation is a non-profit. It is my understanding this is a 0% interest loan, not an investment. I'm no expert, but after examining their 2019 balance sheet, it seems to me like they are well on their way to paying it back.
I guess the salaries are competitive in San Francisco. Spicy!
Nothing screams privacy more than demanding your phone number, attaching it to a recurring conventional payment rail and demanding your entire address book.
