Stick with #signal, y'all. Yes, they're still dealing with the MASSIVE influx of users, but it's hard to predict that you're going to have growth on the scale Signal has seen, and today's was the biggest influx yet.
I have tried and failed to find the foundation's annual reports. Could you direct me please to where I see how they spend what? https://signalfoundation.org/ (I wonder how will they repay that $100 million in the far future, too.)
thanks. this is from 2018, where is 2019? (I guess 2020 will be prepared Q2?) In 2018 they used $400,000 for hosting and $1,500,000 for twilio phone number verification (even salaries for 12 people are just slightly higher at $1,8M). Shocking. So they basically have about 20 years of operation costs then they go to jail? 🙂
The 2018 990 was the latest available. I've seen lots of 501(c)3 organizations prepare once every few years, for whatever reason (not really sure why), so that isn't unusual.
And the 'salary' number includes payroll taxes and other stuff - the actual take-home combined salaries are somewhere around 1.6M. But looking at the individual salaries, they're not that high...I think it's pretty reasonable considering how much goes into developing Signal and desigining the protocols.
No, no, I am abolutely for good salaries! If people are working they shall be paid. I said the opposite: the salaries are pretty low compared to the twilio cost. Still I wonder if there are 5 times(!) demand how the costs skyrocket.
Ohhh gotcha. Yeah, Twilio costs are ridiculous - I wonder if they can find another provider /sigh
I think this next month's bill for Twilio is going to be through the roof, but the real issue is going to be the ongoing AWS cost, not the one-time jump in the Twilio bill.
Ah, there's this note on the IRS website: Expect delays in data updates for the Tax Exempt Organization Search tool. We are still processing paper-filed 990 series received April 2020 and later.
That would explain why the 2019 990 isn't available.
yet another reason why they ought to publish for themselves. But I understand nobody's getting paid for doing it. That's okay. Thanks for the mini-discussion! 😉
Hehe yeah, thanks for bringing it up - otherwise I probably wouldn't have looked into it (since I do generally trust the STF). I posted on /r/signal over on Reddit, where some Signal devs lurk, so hopefully they'll take note! 🙂
I mean, fair. But *someone* has to pay those server costs, so decentralization doesn't really solve that issue.
Look, Signal's been able to achieve what pretty much every other E2E encrypted messenger has not - it's made secure, private messaging accessible and wide-spread. I hope we can both acknowledge that.
Who pays Mastodon? Matrix? But yes, I acknowledge the inventions of Signal, which is used in WhatsApp and Matrix and elsewhere but it took time and I am not yet sure of the merits. I support people supporting them, for myself I'll wait a bit since Moxie's speeches are scary and there's lot to disagree with.
Well, that's the point. I don't actually _know_ who's paying for the servers (I think this one is partly(?) paid for through Patreon donations). The fact that costs are invisible doesn't mean they don't exist.
I run about 20 services, apart from mastodon matrix, friendica, diaspora, peertube and whatnot. It costs a really low amount of money for a few hundred users, and it's fun. If it became larger I'd ask for some money. But if my server gets overloaded then people can use yours, Joe's and Jane's, and they will be still able to communicate. Decentralised systems [as a whole] are way harder to hammer down.
But pretty much _any_ service will buckle under a sudden influx of 40+ million users. It doesn't matter how distributed the infrastructure is.
Also, I suspect if decentralized social networking and messaging platforms/protocols become more "mainstream", we'll run into the same issue as is currently the case with email: the protocol stagnates and there are one or two big providers that everyone uses, so it's not really decentralized in practice.
grin
•ಚಿರಾಗ್ 🌹✊🏾Ⓥ🌱🇵🇸 (he/him)
•grin
•https://signalfoundation.org/
(I wonder how will they repay that $100 million in the far future, too.)
ಚಿರಾಗ್ 🌹✊🏾Ⓥ🌱🇵🇸 (he/him)
•I agree that they should link to their most recent 990 on their website or upload it directly, though. It's a bad look.
grin
•In 2018 they used $400,000 for hosting and $1,500,000 for twilio phone number verification (even salaries for 12 people are just slightly higher at $1,8M). Shocking.
So they basically have about 20 years of operation costs then they go to jail? 🙂
ಚಿರಾಗ್ 🌹✊🏾Ⓥ🌱🇵🇸 (he/him)
•And the 'salary' number includes payroll taxes and other stuff - the actual take-home combined salaries are somewhere around 1.6M. But looking at the individual salaries, they're not that high...I think it's pretty reasonable considering how much goes into developing Signal and desigining the protocols.
grin
•I said the opposite: the salaries are pretty low compared to the twilio cost.
Still I wonder if there are 5 times(!) demand how the costs skyrocket.
ಚಿರಾಗ್ 🌹✊🏾Ⓥ🌱🇵🇸 (he/him)
•I think this next month's bill for Twilio is going to be through the roof, but the real issue is going to be the ongoing AWS cost, not the one-time jump in the Twilio bill.
ಚಿರಾಗ್ 🌹✊🏾Ⓥ🌱🇵🇸 (he/him)
•That would explain why the 2019 990 isn't available.
grin
•ಚಿರಾಗ್ 🌹✊🏾Ⓥ🌱🇵🇸 (he/him)
•grin
•ಚಿರಾಗ್ 🌹✊🏾Ⓥ🌱🇵🇸 (he/him)
•Look, Signal's been able to achieve what pretty much every other E2E encrypted messenger has not - it's made secure, private messaging accessible and wide-spread. I hope we can both acknowledge that.
grin
•But yes, I acknowledge the inventions of Signal, which is used in WhatsApp and Matrix and elsewhere but it took time and I am not yet sure of the merits.
I support people supporting them, for myself I'll wait a bit since Moxie's speeches are scary and there's lot to disagree with.
ಚಿರಾಗ್ 🌹✊🏾Ⓥ🌱🇵🇸 (he/him)
•grin
•Decentralised systems [as a whole] are way harder to hammer down.
ಚಿರಾಗ್ 🌹✊🏾Ⓥ🌱🇵🇸 (he/him)
•Also, I suspect if decentralized social networking and messaging platforms/protocols become more "mainstream", we'll run into the same issue as is currently the case with email: the protocol stagnates and there are one or two big providers that everyone uses, so it's not really decentralized in practice.