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Signal would be a lot more pragmatic if they would develop a funding model based on selling something for actual money, rather then subsisting off donations. S

by XorNot 3y ago

Signal would be a lot more pragmatic if they would develop a funding model based on selling something for actual money, rather then subsisting off donations. Sell "Signal for Business" accounts or something so I can stop having my bank or local government depend on SMS to communicate with me. I know a number of doctors who'd really love to be able to use Signal to talk to their patients (and would tell them to install it) if it was possible to sanely integrate with it from their practice management software. As it is, Signal lives in the same space that every other "free" internet service does - if you're not the customer, you're the product. And we get to just wait till that bill comes due.

greyface- 3y ago
And that bill will be substantial. According to Signal Foundation's 2021 IRS Form 990, their annual Twilio+Azure+AWS+GCP cloud spend was $15,196,853. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/824506840/202212729349301631/full https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/824...
k_bx 3y ago
They've established their name and reputation, now they need to build on top of that. Like Mozilla and their VPN product, Signal can do a similar thing, keeping the Signal free.
- pjerem 3y ago
  I would be surprised if Mozilla’s VPN was a substantial source of income. They are just reselling Mullvad’s VPN but for double price. That’s incredibly lazy and I hope Signal will find something more ambitious.
  - k_bx 3y ago
    That is a mistake by Mozilla IMO. They could've done better. But VPN is just a beginning, there are many other opportunities. Like recently-launched containerized JS playground. Or hosted email. Or Nextcloud-like product in general. Many ways to go.
- blitzar 3y ago
  They've established their name and reputation, now they need to build on top of that. Like all the other VC products, Signal can do a similar thing, keeping the Signal free.
domh 3y ago
I agree with this! But they seem to have backed themselves into a corner where anything pro-business automatically has to be anti-privacy so they dont do it. I guess there must be some technical challenges to opening up Signal APIs to third parties? I was against WhatsApp for Business until I had to use it to communicate with Virgin Atlantic. It was so much better than getting on the phone to call them! It probably took longer overall whilst waiting an hour or two between replies, but having a history of the conversation and knowing there's someone reading my request in full and replying properly was great. I dont know why Signal are wasting their time with cryptocurrency projects, whilst the normal app seems pretty stagnant. I'd love a 3rd party API or bot system that was done in a tasteful and private way, but I dont believe there are any plans for it.
- stavros 3y ago
  But you can already do this? I've created various bots, eg a ChatGPT one. There's signald and pysignald and it takes five lines of code to make a bot.
  - domh 3y ago
    No first class support means I've never dug into it myself. You never know if the thing you build is going to work from one day to the next - how reliable have they been? How do you do the phone number validation step? I'll look into it...
    - stavros 3y ago
      It's been very reliable for me. I use the method Signal Desktop uses, where you bind signald as a client to your phone, and it's worked great. It does mean you need a phone, but the method where signald is the client directly has worked well too. It needs a phone number, obviously, but you authenticate it once (with an SMS) and that's it.
motohagiography 3y ago
If they sell anything at all, it exposes them to the local regulations of wherever they are taking money, and then the survival of the org and technology becomes dependent on the income, which has conditions attached to it. Saying Signal should sell something is like recommending someone develop a drug habit.
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  Signal Foundation is incorporated in America, so they're already exposed to American regulations. They could sell things (tshirts or exclusive client features or something) in America without exposing themselves more than they already are.
  - motohagiography 3y ago
    I thought about merch and things like that, but really, this is an open source project that a lot of people depend on, and it just happens to be backed by a US foundation, which is a pretty good structure. Imo, the real risk to Signal will come from partisan and intelligence linked agitators from academia taking over its board and stacking the project with people who will add back doors, or acquiesce to state meddling. The more formal and complex the organization becomes the more likely it will be infiltrated and subverted. It's worth having a 5-10 year horizon for planning privacy tech - and organizing to make the arms race in it less necessary by reining in the agencies who threaten it. I'm optimistic about the bluesky protocol, and what twitter may become, but without mitigating the official powers of privacy's antagonists, it's just a toy distraction. If you aren't using privacy tools to form networks and organize to preserve privacy, the tools only enable timidity. This is why I was suggesting in another thread that Signal should preemptively pull out of the UK in response to their crypto legislation, as hiding from these people is just a substitute for action.

by XorNot 3y ago

greyface- 3y ago

And that bill will be substantial. According to Signal Foundation's 2021 IRS Form 990, their annual Twilio+Azure+AWS+GCP cloud spend was $15,196,853. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/824506840/202212729349301631/full https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/824...

k_bx 3y ago

They've established their name and reputation, now they need to build on top of that. Like Mozilla and their VPN product, Signal can do a similar thing, keeping the Signal free.

pjerem 3y ago
I would be surprised if Mozilla’s VPN was a substantial source of income. They are just reselling Mullvad’s VPN but for double price. That’s incredibly lazy and I hope Signal will find something more ambitious.
- k_bx 3y ago
  That is a mistake by Mozilla IMO. They could've done better. But VPN is just a beginning, there are many other opportunities. Like recently-launched containerized JS playground. Or hosted email. Or Nextcloud-like product in general. Many ways to go.
blitzar 3y ago
They've established their name and reputation, now they need to build on top of that. Like all the other VC products, Signal can do a similar thing, keeping the Signal free.

domh 3y ago

I agree with this! But they seem to have backed themselves into a corner where anything pro-business automatically has to be anti-privacy so they dont do it. I guess there must be some technical challenges to opening up Signal APIs to third parties? I was against WhatsApp for Business until I had to use it to communicate with Virgin Atlantic. It was so much better than getting on the phone to call them! It probably took longer overall whilst waiting an hour or two between replies, but having a history of the conversation and knowing there's someone reading my request in full and replying properly was great. I dont know why Signal are wasting their time with cryptocurrency projects, whilst the normal app seems pretty stagnant. I'd love a 3rd party API or bot system that was done in a tasteful and private way, but I dont believe there are any plans for it.

stavros 3y ago
But you can already do this? I've created various bots, eg a ChatGPT one. There's signald and pysignald and it takes five lines of code to make a bot.
- domh 3y ago
  No first class support means I've never dug into it myself. You never know if the thing you build is going to work from one day to the next - how reliable have they been? How do you do the phone number validation step? I'll look into it...
  - stavros 3y ago
    It's been very reliable for me. I use the method Signal Desktop uses, where you bind signald as a client to your phone, and it's worked great. It does mean you need a phone, but the method where signald is the client directly has worked well too. It needs a phone number, obviously, but you authenticate it once (with an SMS) and that's it.

motohagiography 3y ago

If they sell anything at all, it exposes them to the local regulations of wherever they are taking money, and then the survival of the org and technology becomes dependent on the income, which has conditions attached to it. Saying Signal should sell something is like recommending someone develop a drug habit.

mcpackieh 3y ago
Signal Foundation is incorporated in America, so they're already exposed to American regulations. They could sell things (tshirts or exclusive client features or something) in America without exposing themselves more than they already are.
- motohagiography 3y ago
  I thought about merch and things like that, but really, this is an open source project that a lot of people depend on, and it just happens to be backed by a US foundation, which is a pretty good structure. Imo, the real risk to Signal will come from partisan and intelligence linked agitators from academia taking over its board and stacking the project with people who will add back doors, or acquiesce to state meddling. The more formal and complex the organization becomes the more likely it will be infiltrated and subverted. It's worth having a 5-10 year horizon for planning privacy tech - and organizing to make the arms race in it less necessary by reining in the agencies who threaten it. I'm optimistic about the bluesky protocol, and what twitter may become, but without mitigating the official powers of privacy's antagonists, it's just a toy distraction. If you aren't using privacy tools to form networks and organize to preserve privacy, the tools only enable timidity. This is why I was suggesting in another thread that Signal should preemptively pull out of the UK in response to their crypto legislation, as hiding from these people is just a substitute for action.