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.
Funnily enough their biggest expense (sending SMS during registration) is making the accounts less private.
They could save a lot on infrastructure costs if they decentralised their network and stopped using phone numbers as unique identifiers.
November 9th, the verge: Signal tests usernames so you can avoid sharing your phone number
the phone number is still going to be required for making an account, you can just choose to not share it with others and give them your username instead.
Yes but you still need one and you still lose access to your account if you lose your number.
How?
There’s an IETF internet standard for federated messaging called XMPP. Just be compatible with the standard. It also allows for extensions if you offer more than the core spec.
There’s a few forks that have done it. You could also look to Matrix to see how they’ve done it.
They should do a charity stream event or something. Do Q&A stuff, get interest of more people, and raise money?
Are decentralised apps like element much less expensive ?
The load distributes across more shoulders automatically.
If you only host a server for yourself and 10 friends it costs next to nothing, if you have a big operation it can get just as expensive, it depends on what you are willing to do.
With centralized systems there is no choice but for the one centralized host to host everything.
Then is it better to use element over signal as decentralised apps may be more sustainable for long term use ?
The costs are distributed as there is not one single instance. Just like with Lemmy.
Although there is one huge instance on matrix (matrix.org), a bit like lemmy.ml here. But it doesn’t have to be like that, they can close signups or discourage them similar to the way lemmy.ml is doing that now.
SimpleX Chat
Indeed. Same tech as Signal (minus the new quantum insurance thing) but without needing a phone number. Unfortunately it is buggy re invitations.
