They started Signal "to support, accelerate, and broaden Signal's mission of making private communication accessible and ubiquitous". Yes, Marlinspike is highly

They started Signal "to support, accelerate, and broaden Signal's mission of making private communication accessible and ubiquitous". Yes, Marlinspike is highly talented and worked on the security at Twitter. I don't see anything bad about that. Signal started of with not ONLY privacy in mind. In the beginning the app required even Google Play Services, which was dropped because of pushback from the community. It seems that his experience in sillicion valley startups, also reflects on how Signal manages growth and thinks about user adoption of their product. On top of that, they try to apply as much privacy as possible. If they would have started the other way around, they wouldn't have gotten so far. A certain spirit seems to be necessary to give privacy to the masses. Next to that, they are paving the way to no longer require phone numbers: https://signal.org/blog/signal-pins/ https://signal.org/blog/signal-pins/