Privacy is Priceless, but Signal is Expensive

Technology@beehaw.org – 248 points – 12 months ago

Privacy is Priceless, but Signal is Expensive

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.

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For the current distribution I quote from the linked source :

Current Infrastructure Costs (as of November 2023): Approximately $14 million dollars per year.

Storage: $1.3 million dollars per year.
Servers: $2.9 million dollars per year.
Registration Fees: $6 million dollars per year.
Total Bandwidth: $2.8 million dollars per year.
Additional Services: $700,000 dollars per year.

Yes, but I was talking about the salary part, which is separate from the costs you mentioned.

It's 19 million just for people.

Yhea no worries, I was just trying to get all the budgets together. I agree it seems quite an high budget

Also from the source:

To sustain our ongoing development efforts, about half of Signal’s overall operating budget goes towards recruiting, compensating, and retaining the people who build and care for Signal. When benefits, HR services, taxes, recruiting, and salaries are included, this translates to around $19 million dollars per year.