Comment by Canada

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.