Privacy is Priceless, but Signal is Expensive

fer0n@lemm.ee to Technology@beehaw.org – 248 points – Privacy is Priceless, but Signal is Expensive
signal.org

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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Ten years ago sure, the days I'd suggest matrix instead.

I assessed XMPP vs Matrix about 8 years ago, and strikingly, the basis on which it didn't make the cut still applies today. Here's what I responded to a sibling post: https://programming.dev/comment/5408356

In short, Matrix dug themselves into a complexity pit with an inadequate protocol, survived for a while on venture capital money (upscaling servers and marketing at all cost), all of it dried up, and now they are in financial trouble. Matrix won't disappear overnight, but is definitely losing the means to run the managed instances and the client/server ecosystem.

Is Matrix's problem just the large scale? I thought it worked relatively well if you're just using it for personal needs like smaller servers and personal bridges.

It works great for me for personal use yes.

Isn't that why they built matrix 2? Or am I thinking of element 2?

Edit: it's matrix

https://matrix.org/blog/2023/09/matrix-2-0/

If you read between the lines, Matrix 2 is practically about handing the client state over to the server (what they refer to as "sliding sync"). Realistically, this is an admission that the protocol is too complex to be handled efficiently on the user's devices. I'm not saying there are not clear benefits (and new trade-offs) to the approach, just that in the grand scheme of things the complexity is shifted elsewhere (and admins foot a larger bill).

And Element X as client.

They are kinda shooting themselves in the foot with all their big rewrites though. Like Vector, Riot, Element, Element X (and I think before vector/riot there was another official client). And Synapse/dendrite... It feels like they spread their development over too many fronts.