Privacy is Priceless, but Signal is Expensive
Privacy is Priceless, but Signal is Expensive
Signal is the world’s most widely used truly private messaging app, and our cryptographic technologies provide extra layers of privacy beyond the Signal app itself. Since launching in 2013, the Signal Protocol—our end-to-end encryption technology—has become the de facto standard for private commu...
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.
I love Signal but this is one of many problems with centralized servers. Not only can they be disabled by the gov but they cost, as seen here, tens of millions of dollars to keep running at scale.
What is the advantage? Why are we not using P2P systems? If I can download a 30GB video problem-free over and over again, shouldn't it be simple enough to do with a 1mb text file?
A huge part of their costs is just verifying phone numbers, which is something the service does not need and shouldn't even have.
In total, around 50 full-time employees currently work on Signal
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When benefits, HR services, taxes, recruiting, and salaries are included, this translates to around $19 million dollars per year.
That's 380k/employee on average. Even if half of that went to taxes and other expenses, on average they're paying their employees around 190k/year.
Bro, as a European dev, that's triple my salary! They could possibly double or triple their workforce if they hired from outside of the US.
They should do a charity stream event or something. Do Q&A stuff, get interest of more people, and raise money?