Gregory's ServerSignal is a nonprofit. But what does this mean in practice? Today we do something most tech co’s avoid: talk money. What does it cost for Signal to play in a lane dominated by billion $ corporations, while rejecting the surveillance business model?
|
24 comments
By being transparent about Signal, we also hope to shed light on the industry. We show how expensive the development of high- availability consumer tech is & by implication the massive profitability of the surveillance business model underwriting most tech. We also believe it is imperative to build alternatives to the current tech ecosystem & its reliance on surveillance. And building these alternatives requires understanding the political economy of the industry, so we don’t mistake an elegant idea for a realistic possibility. If you rely on Signal, if you believe in what we’re doing, or if you want to support tech done differently, please donate to support our work.  @signalapp You'd be doing yourself a huge favor if you added a recurring annual donation in the app. I'm happy to donate $5-10/year but $60/year (the current minimum donation amount) is way too high for something barely anyone I know actually uses.  @AudraTran @signalapp @AudraTran @signalapp I believe you are mistaken. At least in my app, donations of 5 swiss francs (about 5 dollars) can be made. @signalapp Thanks for what you are doing. I use to donate monthly, but for quite a long time now, I still get an error about my CVC being wrong. And it's not. Either for one-shot donations or monthly ones. Fix that and I *can* literally donate again... (and reintroduce SMS within the app, which counts even more since Google is ending support of AOSP SMS app, and I'd be glad to donate even more 🙏)  @signalapp what's that cost per user / cost per message? I think I did a similar thing asking about mastodon user costs in terms of active vs inactive users, and came to a mostly uniform number of cents / user / month  @risottobias @signalapp They said millions of users and $50M in costs (by 2025), so I'd say less than $25/year. Which frankly is an excellent price for what you get. I can afford to pay more than the costs so that others who can't afford it can still use the service.   @signalapp Signal is abundantly useful. It is interesting, also, to see how much it costs to provide services that interface with the traditional telephone network, as opposed to, say, usernames. @signalapp Thanks for the write up. I'd love to see the phone number registration fees decrease somehow, but I trust you are doing your research and found it's the least costly option, and also better for people (saving us from spam accounts). @signalapp This was interesting to see what costs are like for a non-profit. I did not know that was Signal's structure. A per-account cost would be useful, too. @signalapp Also remember that as with all US non-profits, Signal's tax filings are public. So you can see another (if less up to date) breakdown of their expenditures at https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/824506840/202212729349301631/full :) @signalapp great write-up. Love the transparency. Donated and would love more friends to move from WhatsApp but they don't because of network effects |
We’re doing this to provide transparency into Signal, and to make clear why our choice of nonprofit status isn’t just nice to have, but a fundamental safeguard against the pressures of a profitable business model that fundamentally contradicts our stance on privacy.