Comment by Canada
2 years ago
Seriously consider setting up a recurring donation if you prefer Signal. They have delivered consistently over the years. I set the $20/month back when they introduced the option.
I'm curious what the breakdown of donations is. I only have 1 contact with a $10/month and 1 with a $5/month badge. Of course there could be others not displaying the badge. Signal really needs 500,000 people giving $20/month and plus the rich guys giving some millions on top of that to be in a safe financial position.
Maybe something that could be done to encourage donations is have the client estimate how much raw infra costs your usage created and display in the donation screen.
20/month for every chat service I use is very steep. I'd be spending more on chat services than on mobile data + unlimited calling + landline + DSL + streaming services combined!
They actual costs are apparently about 1 USD per year per user. I usually at least double (usually more) my incurred cost when the donation is optional, to cover for those who can't or won't pay, but paying 240× the cost price seems wasteful as well when there are other nonprofits that can do more good with every dollar you give them (be it solving poverty, climate change, whatever you find valuable) rather than one which has mostly fixed fees
I'm not suggesting every chat service get donations. I'm only giving to Signal, the rest of the chat services I have to use get 0.
I'm donating more than my costs deliberately because I fully understand that most users are not going to contribute money, full stop. I need those users though, because they are the people I want to privately communicate with. So the obvious thing to do is pay for as many other users as I can. If there's 50M monthly active users, and if 1% of them are like me and highly value Signal, then each of us 1% users can pay $20/month and cover the entire operation. Then the contributions of the super rich donors can be saved to rebuild the war chest.
$20/month is nothing to me considering the value I get. I understand that most won't feel that way, which is why I'm only appealing to those who do feel as I do to just get that recurring donation going now.
how many chat services do you use? and how many are making money off of you in other ways?
not who you replied to, but:
- signal for family and some techy friends
- whatsapp cuz some friends dont really get signal
- imessage cuz some friends dont get whatsapp nor signal
- viber cuz family across seas and that's whats popular there
- slack with some friends cuz it's nice to have focused discussions in channels
- discord cuz its better for gaming
- ig messaging cuz i stay in touch with less close acquaintances and some friends that way, comment on their stories and chat about whats going on in the moment
1 reply →
I fail to understand the point of supporting an organization that is completely against self-sovereignty like Signal is. Why would I want to pay someone to develop something that traps me into their platform and does not offer a way out?
Great, you go ahead and get all your friends in family using Matrix. I'll join you there when all that is sorted out and it's practical to get my lawyers and doctors and accountants and friends and family onboard. Until then, we'll keep using Signal.
First, you talk like Signal never had any issue with usability or functionality, which is far from the truth. Signal amount of bugs and security issues with their client is notorious, and the insistence of requiring phone numbers is just a silly "let them have cake approach" that is conveniently ignored for too long.
Second, are you hedging your bets and supporting Matrix or XMPP as well, or will you only encourage people to "donate" to the platform that you happen to have picked already?
4 replies →
Just don't use it, don't generate cost for them, don't be trapped by them. Everyone wins.
The 50 million using them all lose because they are locked into a monopolistic platform.
7 replies →
Given how many activists have used it in overthrowing dictatorial governments, self-sovereignty seems an odd choice of words to claim it doesn’t support.
Perhaps it was a bad choice of words. What I mean is that they say "you don't need to trust us", yet they require you to run through them. They refuse to build their system in a decentralized way, and the more that time goes by the more the decentralized alternatives are showing they are as secure as Signal without forcing us to accept their restrictions like mandatory use of phone numbers for authentication.
8 replies →
> Given how many activists have used it in overthrowing dictatorial governments
How many? There's some news about it being recommended for use by BLM protesters, and about it being blocked in China, Iran, etc. Where is this info about it being used in "overthrowing dictatorial governments"?
Yeah this is the one thing I have against signal and why I always advise against it. Their stance against third party clients and federation.
Not completely ? Their server seems to be open source too now (with the exception of the spam filter) ?
Can I operate my own Signal server and talk with people on the "main" one?
18 replies →
bro, you're working for one of chat programs, yes? never heard of communick before. won't ever use it. if people ask me about it, i will show them how a person related to communick behaves in public.
You are creating an ad-hominem by thinking that I can not criticize Signal because I have a competing offer. And to add insult to injury, you seem to have a misconception of what Communick is.
Communick is not "a chat program". Communick is a service provider, which promotes and works only with truly open protocols. There is no custom client or lock-in based feature that I have. This means that if you are my customer and you want to move out you are absolutely free to get your things and move to a different place instantly.
2 replies →
Same. I have been doing the recurring payment since they offered it. Even though I'm effectively only using it with my partner. But that is every day
It feels good supporting something worthwhile.