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I just donated to Signal after seeing the error banner in the app. I realised I was more than happy to pay WhatsApp's yearly charge back in the pre-Facebook da
by alan5 6y ago
I just donated to Signal after seeing the error banner in the app.
I realised I was more than happy to pay WhatsApp's yearly charge back in the pre-Facebook days (think it was 70p or so?).
Figured I could give Signal a few quid every now and then, maybe keep a server up for a few seconds :)
Donation link should anyone be interested:
https://signal.org/donate/ https://signal.org/donate/
- jrochkind1 6y agoyour comment led me to do same!
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- olah_1 6y agoWe have no info as to how much money they need or how much they currently have. For all we know, this was just an area of oversight and not related to funding at all. I’d prefer to pay yearly than to feel the spectre of guilt for using a “free” app.
- too_pricey 6y agoThey're a non-profit, so their financials are publicly disclosed. ProPublica only has it as recently as 2018, but here was the financials then: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/display_990/824506840/12_2019_prefixes_82-86%2F824506840_201812_990_2019121216951146 https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/display_990/82450...
- olah_1 6y agoThat’s helpful, thanks. So they’re 4mil in the hole? How is it possible that they’re still running?
- bilal4hmed 6y agoThey have $100 mn in donation from Acton
- nostromo 6y agoThat wasn't a donation, it was a loan.
- caturopath 6y ago(A zero-interest 50-year loan, not a bona fide "I want my money back" loan.)
- taejo 6y agoA fifty-year, interest-free loan is functionally a donation, IMO
- RedComet 6y agoYou're not allowed to mention that, we have to pretend it's a charity.
- olah_1 6y agoWeird that it isn't listed in the data in that document. I have no idea why anyone would donate $20 when they're sipping on $100m ...
- bilal4hmed 6y ago$100 million given current growth wont last as long. Telegram 4 years had a run rate of $1 million per month for servers and dev costs. At that time they had about 200 million users. Signal is using AWS & GCP ( for cloud fronting ), they could be approaching that spend level.
- olah_1 6y ago> $100 million given current growth wont last as long. That is 100% their problem, though. I trust that they will develop a sustainable business model when it becomes necessary. Otherwise, look at their tax info shared above. Sporadic donations won't even make a small dent. I mean, shoot, they won't even give us a hint at how much to donate to cover our own costs. That would be a start.
- Aeolun 6y agoI just get stuck in an infinite cloudflare loop :(
- roughly 6y agoGood news, then! They have a monthly recurring donation option.
- zamadatix 6y agoSo how much covers my use?
- roughly 6y agoHell if I know. Give what feels right to you - imagine the service going away tomorrow, and someone saying "If only you'd paid $X/mo, this wouldn't be happening!" What's the value of X where you'd regret not having done so?
- zamadatix 6y agoNot really worried about funding its existence for the sake of it just not freeloading my use while it's here and I decide it's worth it which is what the gp was referring to as well.
- roughly 6y agoI'd still argue to give the amount the service is worth to you, but if you're not willing to do that, then I'd say bilal4hmed is probably right - $1/mo is probably sufficient. Facebook, Twitter, etc. all have ARPUs at or below $12/yr.
- bilal4hmed 6y agoalso check if your employer does a matching donation. Its an easy way to double your donation. I do a single yearly donation for that reason
- bilal4hmed 6y agoWhatsApp used to do a $1 per year when they had 300 million users and it was profitable. So whatever you are comfortable with.
- earth2mars 6y agome too. just donated. please comment below if you also donated. let's keep this thing running! Its personal interest now, because I moved bunch of groups from whatsapp and its not working now! but at the same I love these guys for what they do.
- anon776 6y agoDonated.
- hakeldama 6y agoI donated
- patriksvensson 6y agoI donated!
- coandco 6y agoI donated as well. I've gotten a lot of good use out of Signal over the years.
- LTL_FTC 6y agoDone with flying colors.
- rottc0dd 6y agoI donated too. I am yet to use it. Hope they release a desktop version not linked to phone soon.
- charsi 6y agodonated
- Daniel_sk 6y agoJust donated.
- bilal4hmed 6y agoSaw this on reddit, so copying here Donate to them so they can buy more servers https://signal.org/donate/ https://signal.org/donate/ * If you work in the US, many corporations will match your donation. Easy double of your donation * Set https://smile.amazon.com https://smile.amazon.com to Signal, so your purchases on Amazon go to Signal * Use services like Paypal to donate, that sends 100% of the money to the foundation
- heisenbergs 6y agofor changing amazon smile: is it "Signal Technology Foundation - Location: Mountain View, CA"? no description available unfortunately. seem to be a bunch with the name signal and that was the closest in name to what seems to be the signal foundation
- bilal4hmed 6y agoSignal Technology Foundation is the right one
- windthrown 6y agoWould you mind expanding on the PayPal point? Is that referring to donating outside the Signal website which appears to use "DonorBox" rather than PayPal?
- etrautmann 6y agoThanks! Just donated too
- jedevc 6y agoThanks for your comment, I've just donated too.
- dt3ft 6y agoSignal is being used by at least 10 well-paid medical professionals (group chat) that I know of, and one of them proclaimed today that Signal is owned by Elon Musk (probably because he tweeted about it). I did not care to educate them. And this is in a first world country with a rather wealthy population. Why am I saying this? Users don't give a damn, they expect free things, and they expect things which work. They have been taught to use appstores on their phones where tapping on a button installs an app and everything just works with zero effort on their end, while completely ignoring the work that someone put into creating the very app they depend on. Majority will never, ever, even think about it, let alone click on the developers website to find out who created the miracle they use. This practice needs to end. I believe that it is time to stop making free products. Developers should unite in this and finally start to value their hard work.
- api 6y agoProblem is that the largest of the free products aren't free. They are surveillanceware. "Free" is used as a gimmick to get them onto as many phones as possible to surveil people. Those players have zero incentive to change that, and will be more than happy to use "free" to edge out any paid competition. This is how paid apps became almost non-existent outside of professional niches.
- roughly 6y agoThis is all probably correct, and should change in the long term. In the short term, I hope you've donated to Signal, and it would also help if you'd dispel the misinformation when you hear it. The world would be better if the world were better, but until it is, would you mind helping out a bit?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dt3ft 6y agoI just donated: https://media.20-things.com/BbhxZmPSyygP29ZtfCM46q.png https://media.20-things.com/BbhxZmPSyygP29ZtfCM46q.png The problem is, this is not a sustainable model (Wikipedia is a whole other universe and can not be compared) and it bugs me so much to see developers pour their souls into projects which end up dying.
- ramboldio 6y agoGood call. Donated
- aendruk 6y agoI'd choose an annual recurring donation if the platform offered it.
- philshem 6y agoThe platform offers a recurring monthly donation. Divide by 12?
- aendruk 6y ago$1/mo is prevented by a hard minimum, and likely for good reason as the credit card processor imposes a flat base fee.
- Symbiote 6y agoI don't really want to see a bill for e.g. £0.41 every month on my credit card statement, and at some point the transaction fees would become a bother for Signal. I'd have ticked "recurring annually" if the option had existed.
- alias_neo 6y agoSet up a recurring calendar reminder. Maybe boxing day or new years day and give yourself a fresh start to the year with some donations.
- godelski 6y agoThey do monthly so you could divide your yearly contribution by 12.
- probst 6y agoExcept you have to be careful so the monthly amounts don't end up so small that the credit card processing fees eat up the majority of your donation! The processing done via Stripe (which is used by Donorbox) has a fixed minimum fee of 30 cents per transaction. Edit: unless they have some special lower cost stripe rate of course, in which case you can ignore my comment altogether ;)
- JUjFJE2I9Y 6y ago"...As of June 2020, Signal had more than 32.4 million total downloads, and the app had approximately 20 million monthly active users as of December 2020...." [0] "...The initial $50M in funding was a loan, not a donation, from Brian Acton to the new nonprofit Signal Technology Foundation. 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..." [1] What happens when they add 50M or 100M more users? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_%28software%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_%28software%29 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_Foundation
- some_random 6y ago0% interest repaid in 48 years... I'm sure they'll figure something out
- alg0 6y agoThe loan seems to be more a techinical stand-point than a real loan.
- bilal4hmed 6y agoThe loan is not a loan, its a gift. There was some tax reason it was done this way
- caturopath 6y agoDo you understand what the tax play is?
- bilal4hmed 6y agohttps://aronsonllc.com/nonprofit-organizations-accounting-for-interest-free-loans/ https://aronsonllc.com/nonprofit-organizations-accounting-fo... I dont understand it much, but its to make Signals life easier during tax time since its such a large gift.
- 6y ago
- philshem 6y agoThanks for the reminder. I donated. I've been using Signal for a couple years now. Finally deleted WhatsApp this week. This is the first outage of Signal that I noticed. It's a shame, but growing pains do happen.
- rubenbe 6y agoAnother donation. Everyone around me starts switching suddenly and I want to keep them on Signal.
- danbruder 6y agoThanks for posting, I just donated too. Signal is doing important work and I hope they can continue under this new load :)
- Mc91 6y agoA good thought, I just did as well.
- SomeHacker44 6y agoDonated, and submitted for employer match!
- dmitrygr 6y agoGood idea. Just did too!
- CodeGlitch 6y agoI really wish the EU would put up funds for open source software, like signal, it seems to be something they could get behind for the greater good. My previous job involved creating a graphical programming language for the generation of GPU shaders, which the EU partly funded. I knew it was going nowhere, and it made me slightly sad tax payer money was being used on something I knew, despite my best efforts, would not work. Oh well...
- sneeuwpopsneeuw 6y agothat sounds interesting do you have any links? or insights to why it did not work out?
- agilob 6y ago>I really wish the EU would put up funds for open source software, like signal, it seems to be something they could get behind for the greater good. They do https://hexus.net/tech/news/software/125747-14-open-source-projects-get-eu-funding-bug-bounty-payments/ https://hexus.net/tech/news/software/125747-14-open-source-p...
- arendtio 6y agoI just wonder about the process and the results. I mean, it doesn't look to me, as if there is a management behind this, that actually has a goal. It looks more like they are giving funds to projects who apply for them. IMO, they should state 3 clear goals and sponsor specific projects which reach those goals. To give some example how those could look like: - create a decentralized, federated instant messaging platform, that is build on public standards - create an e-learning platform that is usable with already established devices - establish a market for the created software with partners Naturally, all result would have to be open-source products and the goals would need some details/numbers to measure them. They could even invest into already established projects, but please, with easy to understand goals.
- input_sh 6y agoI disagree. I believe the governments should fund existing open source software that are considered to be "critical" infrastructure (as in lots and lots of people rely on it) instead of chasing some random goals and adding bureaucracy on top that would slow down lead developers. Just give them money and trust them that they'll do whatever it is they've done so far that many people recognised and started relying on their solution to the problem. Without looking them up, there's exactly three pieces of software in the list above your comment that I don't recognize: FLUX TL, WSO2, midPoint. I'm happy to see all the other names on it, and I'm pretty sure I'll feel the same way about these three after I look them up.
- krrrh 6y agoThey could easily add an optional badge to avatars showing that you donated $1 that year via an optional in-app purchase. The subtle social pressure in a lot of group chats would be pretty effective, and it would help raise awareness that it is run by a non-profit foundation.
- tailspin2019 6y agoThis is a great idea. One of my friends who just jumped ship to Signal this week said in his first Signal message to me that he wished he’d “bought some shares” in Signal when I first told him about it... The first challenge is getting people to join the platform. The second challenge is educating them on how it’s actually funded... (ie NOT by pimping out your personal data for shareholder benefit).
- Daniel_sk 6y agoStock with ticker SIGL surged 6000% on Jan 11 - investors thought it's the Signal Messenger. Same like the wrong Zoom company.
- corford 6y ago"Its market value surged from about $US55 million to over $US6 billion [...]" Pretty bonkers: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-16/signal-telegram-facebook-whatsapp-privacy/13062920 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-16/signal-telegram-faceb...
- nilsbunger 6y agoReally undercuts the argument for the efficient market, at least in the short term!
- andrepd 6y agoI feel the entire history of capitalism undercuts that argument!
- slenk 6y agoI like how you put it. You convinced me to throw a donation at them :)
- ossusermivami 6y agoThanks I just gave 50 bucks, well worth it, that makes me happy!
- AareyBaba 6y agoDid so myself. Gotta support such organisations.
- agilob 6y ago> I just donated to Signal after seeing the error banner in the app. I've tried to donate, but none of my 3 cards worked, I got "card rejected error" without any info why and none of banking apps notified me about new transactions.
- mickotron 6y agoSame issue here, and I don't use PayPal after they asked me to provide info to Equifax to continue using it. They aren't on liberapay as far as I can see.
- AareyBaba 6y agoI had no issue donating to Signal. I use the Privacy app and generated a merchant specific credit card for Signal. This is the best way I have found to do online transactions. You don't even need to use your actual name or address when making a payment to a merchant since Privacy acts as a proxy for you. https://privacy.com https://privacy.com
- mickotron 6y agoThis is actually very cool, I'm checking it out. Thanks!
- suyash 6y agoI was able to donate via PayPal using cc
- tailspin2019 6y agoThanks for posting the link. Donated.
- atoav 6y agoI set up an monthly donation just now, thanks for the reminder. Remember: regular donations are better because they help with long term planning.
- Marsymars 6y agoAlthough monthly donations presumably get more siphoned off in processing fees than an equivalently large donation annually.
- bilal4hmed 6y agoI dont know if Paypal allows for monthly donations but they dont have any processing fees https://www.paypal.com/fundraiser/charity/3675786 https://www.paypal.com/fundraiser/charity/3675786
- Marsymars 6y agoGood to know! But your link now leads to a “The charity you're looking for isn't available right now” page?
- bilal4hmed 6y agoInteresting, I just clicked that link and it worked for me Try searching for Signal Tech Foundation here https://www.paypal.com/fundraiser/hub https://www.paypal.com/fundraiser/hub
- Marsymars 6y agoAh, PayPal URLs without a country code specified defaults to only showing or returning search results for the country they geolocate you to. Non-American users can access the Signal PayPal page at Paypal’s US site: https://www.paypal.com/us/fundraiser/charity/3675786 https://www.paypal.com/us/fundraiser/charity/3675786 Not sure what the logistics of sending money to the USA PayPal Giving Fund are for non-Americans.
- rbjorklin 6y agoThanks for sharing that link, you removed enough friction that I now donate monthly :)
- DyslexicAtheist 6y agoif you can please consider making a regular recurring payment of a few bucks every month rather than a one-shot lump sum. this is because it's easier for a company to budget and plan with recurring revenue than a one-off donation.
- probst 6y agoRecurring and steady incoming is certainly useful for any company, but I would advise against doing tiny monthly donations over a larger yearly one! Processing fees are going to take away a significant chunk of your total donation relatively speaking if your individual donations are small. Let's do some math: In signal's case, since they use Donorbox, there is a 2.9% + 30¢ fee for credit card transactions going via Stripe (in addition to another percentage that goes to donor box). If you were to donate $24 once per year, Signal would end up with just over $23 after processing fees had been deducted. If you donated $2 per month, they would end up with $19.7 per year, an additional $3 being spent on fees! Edit: unless they have some special lower cost stripe rate of course, in which case you can ignore my comment altogether ;)
- bgentry 6y agoThanks for the idea, I also took the opportunity to donate a nice chunk in support of a service I use often and want to continue to exist.
- bilal4hmed 6y agoDo not forget to check if your employer does matching donations. Its an easy way to double your donation.
- bigcohoneypot 6y agoWhat’s the evidence that they are short on dough vs can’t hire?
- bilal4hmed 6y agoAdding more servers to support more users, also means more bandwidth. Those are increasing costs at a rate that they had not planned. Their spend rate has to be insane now to keep things running on top of their rents, utlities, opex. They have to be needing more money than they planned for.
- sgloutnikov 6y agoDoes anyone know if donating to Signal is considered a qualified donation under the CARES Act. The $300 deduction was extended for 2021 [0]. [0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/ashleaebeling/2020/12/22/new-bigger-charitable-tax-break-for-2021-in-year-end-spending-package/?sh=545f11365710 https://www.forbes.com/sites/ashleaebeling/2020/12/22/new-bi...
- waitwhatwhoa 6y agoI am not an accountant or tax attorney, however Signal is a 501c3 so this deduction almost certainly qualifies.
- codinghorror 6y agothank you for that link -- just donated $50!
- rammy1234 6y agoThanks for this link. I donated seeing this link. Should encourage signal to do more
- dpaint 6y agoThank you for the link, I didn't even know they took donations.
- I_am_tiberius 6y agoWould love to donate via the Bitcoin Lightning network.
- kop316 6y agoGood call! I gave them some money too.
- eurg 6y agoNow this is unexpected, and amazing. This is one of the most frictionless donation buttons ever. I love it. Patreon, Paypal, SEPA transfer, all those are a hassle, comparatively. This donation thing used by Signal works exactly as it should be. Enter numbers, hit enter, done. No "please cookie us", no 20 times transfer to other domains, no account creation, and they also don't require stuff like MasterCard 3D secure (which IMNSHO really is useless for donations). Zero hassle, 100% great, and with a nice UX.
- pimeys 6y agoI just set a monthly 10 dollar donation for them. All my friends are in Signal. One of my favorite group chats is in Signal. My mom is using Signal, I just sent her a message I might need to leave WhatsApp, so she immediately installed Signal all by herself. Now we have video chats that have been working really well. I mean, this is the first time the mobile app gives trouble. I'd wish the desktop app would be better, like it's been the biggest problem between me and Signal. Otherwise it's an amazing tool and I'm happy to donate for it to be even better.
- topkeks 6y agoJust threw $10 to them. I'll gladly pay for a quality service.
- somehnguy 6y agoNot as impactful as a realtime donation but I recently changed my Amazon Smile charity to the Signal Foundation after a few years with my previous selection. I was surprised to learn they were an available option. I also installed a browser extension to automatically bring me to smile.amazon when buying anything on Amazon - so far it has had no weird glitchiness when not buying something and works exactly as advertised. Highly recommend looking into this option if you're forgetful like me - so far it has helped me donate 4 times that I would have otherwise forgotten.
- mawise 6y agoI was jumping through similar hoops for a while to get Amazon smile donations, but then I looked at their numbers for how much gets donated and it was a pretty trivial amount. I don't remember what I found (anyone have any stats on Amazon smile donation percentages?) but I decided it wasn't worth my effort compared to adding an extra few dollars to my direct donations.
- bombcar 6y agoIt’s a small percent but adds up - I’ve “smiled” hundreds of dollars. I don’t use the add on and just type “smi” to autocomplete the domain.
- reaperducer 6y agoI don't have percentages, but the charity I have marked for my Amazon Smile donations gets about $100,000 a quarter. So it works for some groups.
- merlinscholz 6y agoIIRC, they donate 0.5% of whatever you pay
- icelancer 6y agoIt's not bad if you connect it to an Amazon Business account. I give hundreds of dollars to the charity I select. Also it's a thing that's easy to opt-into with an extension and just goes on forever, so totally worth doing it.
- cameronperot 6y agoJust donated as well :)
- Cullinet 6y agodon't forget that you can use the Signal protocol in Skype with Skype Private Conversations and delete your own call metadata afterwards as well. edit : which presumably drives licensing income from Microsoft to The Signal Foundation, which I am presuming is better than nothing and if like me you can start using Signal protocol for calling your family elders via Skype without friction, and I simultaneously create widespread adoption of the Signal protocol, I can't see any downside myself anyhow. https://az705183.vo.msecnd.net/onlinesupportmedia/onlinesupport/media/skype/documents/skype-private-conversation-white-paper.pdf https://az705183.vo.msecnd.net/onlinesupportmedia/onlinesupp...
- zed88 6y agoDone, thanks for mentioning this. TBH..I would happily pay for a paid tier of Signal.
- chanakya 6y agoI don't think the problem is money, at least for now. They are either running in a datacenter and can't add capacity fast enough, or have a scale bottlenech in their design, and just weren't designed for this scale.
- bilal4hmed 6y agoThey are hosted on AWS....its definitely seeming like a design issue
- nuker 6y agoDo they have their AWS infra code on github? I'd contribute some design ideas.
- notjes 6y agoI just donated, because of your reminder. Ty.
- mandeepj 6y agoIf $50 F million dollars can’t keep them alive, not sure how far 70p would take them
- Pamar 6y agoJust did the same, thanks for mentioning this.
- icelancer 6y agoJust dropped them a couple bucks and a nice message. Thanks for posting!
- brylie 6y agoI just donated. Thanks for the suggestion. Right now is the time for us to invest in Signal to help see it through this groundswell of adoption.
- jonnypotty 6y agoGreat idea. Best response to a company having issues where we actually care about what they do for us.
- letstalk7 6y agoYou do realize that the signal foundation is funded by licensing deals with whatsapp and other companies right ?
- nix23 6y agoWhat a BS! If you talk about Brian Acton, he sold WhatsApp to Facebook and btw made a big gift to the FreeBSD foundation and is the founder of the Signal Foundation. https://signalfoundation.org/ https://signalfoundation.org/ Learn to inform yourself, this is not a place for fake information.