What is the price of privacy? It has rolled out end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) messaging app Signal Interesting overview From the costs required to develop and maintain their privacy-friendly systems that protect user data from tracking by default.
the Blog post, penned by Signal president Meredith Whitaker and developer Joshua Lund, reveals that it currently spends about $14 million annually on the infrastructure to run the private messaging service; And an additional $19 million a year in staff costs — making a total of about $33 million to keep the lights on and “millions” of users’ messages safe from unwitting eyes.
It also expects the cost of operating its services to rise to about $50 million by 2025.
The post does not show a number of active users for the service. But it is likely in the tens of millions. (a Application businessSignal is estimated to have around 40 million monthly active users in 2021; While the App Annie data we reported at the beginning of that year suggested it had around 20 million users at the end of 2020 – before the surge in usage caused by an exodus of WhatsApp users concerned about changes to the privacy policy of the Meta-owned messaging app. .)
According to the post, 50 full-time employees are working just to run the messaging service, while also conducting research to continue to advance the cause of privacy protections and — in Whitaker’s case at least — landing what feels like a full-time job in the same public policy advocacy space that has seen her travels. Shuttling around the world in recent months Defending privacy rights And trying to repel government incursions targeting E2EE.
This post conveys a clear message: going against the grain of the tech industry by keeping users safe from surveillance is an expensive but vital venture.
Signal is a non-profit, so it’s not a money-making organization. But of course you still need to have enough money to cover the costs. Obviously, costs rise as usage increases. Which means it needs to be proactive about finding ways to increase revenue that don’t compromise its fundamentally pro-user stance.
As explained in the blog post, Signal goes much further in protecting user privacy than even mainstream messaging apps that have implemented its own E2EE protocol (such as Meta-owned WhatsApp). “For example, profile photos and profile names in Signal are always encrypted.” “This means that Signal cannot access your profile name or the profile photo you have chosen. This approach is unique in the industry. In fact, it has More than six years Since we first announced this additional layer of protection, to our knowledge none of our competitors have adopted it yet.
“Other messengers can easily see your profile photo, profile name, and other sensitive information that Signal can’t access. Our choice here reflects our strong commitment to privacy, but it also means that Signal requires more effort to implement support for profile photos. Rather than a vacation project One engineer’s weekend, our teams were asked to develop new methods and concepts within the codebase (such as profile keys), which they worked to deploy across multiple platforms after an extended testing period.
Reveal how much you (already) spend annually on basic things like storage ($1.3 million), servers ($2.9 million), registration fees ($6 million), bandwidth ($2.8 million), and other infrastructure needs like recovery of disaster ($700,000), plus the aforementioned $19 million for employees (covering wages, taxes, and related HR costs), seems intended to (gently) jolt the public — and hopefully prompt a few more users to access Their wallets to share and help secure gold – opt for standard private messaging.
“Frankly, as a nonprofit, we don’t have profit-minded investors or board members hammering us through tough times, urging us to ‘sacrifice a little privacy’ in the name of achieving growth and monetary goals. This is important in an industry where ‘free’ consumer technology is guaranteed.” Almost always by monetizing surveillance and invasion of privacy.
“Instead of monetizing monitoring, we are supported by donations, including a generous initial loan from Brian Acton. Our goal is to get as close as possible to full support from small donors, relying on a large number of modest contributions from people who care about Signal.” We believe this is the safest form of financing in terms of sustainability: ensuring we remain accountable to the people who use Signal, avoiding any point of failure in financing, and rejecting the widespread practice of monetizing surveillance.
As the post also explains, even alternative tech tools like Signal have to pay into the coffers of industry giants who own and manage the underlying infrastructure for applications like cloud computing, in addition to typically being in the business of data capture and monitoring.