this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2023
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614
Privacy is Priceless, but Signal is Expensive (signal.org)
submitted 11 months ago by u_tamtam@programming.dev to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] KapiteinPoffertje@lemmy.world 14 points 11 months ago (3 children)

I assume that is exactly for one of the reasons they mentioned in the article: increasing costs for sms

[–] witten@lemmy.world 20 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Wait. Signal was an SMS client. It wouldn't cost them anything for a user to send an SMS message. IIRC, they nixed the SMS feature for security reasons, not cost.

[–] z0rg0n@monero.town -5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

That's what they told me when gave then feedback through their website.

There's no free lunch and corporations aren't the most trustworthy source of information though so maybe it was about cost.

[–] ninchuka@lemmy.one 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

isnt signal a nonprofit? not a corporation

[–] z0rg0n@monero.town 2 points 11 months ago

Some nonprofit organizations are corporations and have pretty shitty practices:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_Wish_Network

The Morman church is another US 'non-profit organization' yet somehow hordes billions.

Trusting blindly without doing research because something is presented as a non-profit is a good way to be taken for a fool and separated from your money.

When signal made their own cryptocurrency which they entirely premined was a huge red flag. Dropping SMS support was an annoyance that broke the camels back.

[–] PlutoniumAcid@lemmy.world 6 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Yeah I think you are right. I too was really mad at Signal for ditching sms, and THEN having the audacity to ask for donations! This article shines a light on the reasons, wow.

Still, I would only donate if they kept sms in there. Not without sms because now it's just one more isolated platform and no longer a one-stop solution at it used to be.

[–] ScreaminOctopus@sh.itjust.works 5 points 11 months ago

The sms cost is for account creation and verification on new devices, being an sms client didn't cost anything aside from maintaining that portion of the app

[–] gulasch_hanuta@feddit.de 4 points 11 months ago

A bit of transparency at the beginning would've helped...

[–] Kusimulkku@lemm.ee 3 points 11 months ago

One reason was worry that people accidentally send SMS when they mean to send a secure message