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Privacy is Priceless, but Signal is Expensive (signal.org)

submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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.

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[–] [email protected] 45 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Funnily enough their biggest expense (sending SMS during registration) is making the accounts less private.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I imagine not paying for it and being overloaded with spam bots would be more expensive (otherwise they wouldn't be doing it this way!)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

There are lots of reasons to want fewer spam bots and verified identities other than cost.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Privacy and anonymity are not the same thing.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Anonymity is a form of privacy. While for most people it's not necessary to be anonymous to have privacy, it's essential in some cases, like whistleblowers or people living under dictatorships (or even in some democracies where governments keeps trying to get their paws on all metadata).