Signal is the world’s most widely used truly private messaging app, and our cryptographic technologies provide extra layers of privacy beyond the Signal app itself. Since launching in 2013, the Signal Protocol—our end-to-end encryption technology—has become the de facto standard for private commu...

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.

  • fer0n@lemm.eeOP
    17·
    1 year ago

    I‘m not an expert on this topic, so someone correct me if I’m wrong. Signal is only storing stuff temporarily to pass it on, so I’m assuming you’d have the exact same costs even if it weren’t centralized. Maybe even more as it’s probably cheaper to have it managed in one place. I’m assuming all this would do is distribute the cost, but otherwise be the same?

    • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
      11·
      1 year ago

      You’re not wrong. Federation would have higher costs but distributed over more people. Even with pure P2P a-la BitTorrent things might not be significantly cheaper because you’d likely still need to host authentication centrally or federally. You’d only eliminate the message bandwidth costs.

      The thing is, we already have a way to distribute the costs - people subscribe to support Signal. Some pay more, others less. Whether I run a node that serves 100 people or subscribe for $10/month, it’s somewhat equivalent. So the practical takeaway should be - if you want for Signal to keep signalling - subscribe if you can afford it.

    • admiralteal@kbin.social
      7·
      1 year ago

      The difference is that there’s enough unused capacity on your personal device to handle all the traffic any typical user needs to handle in a day many times over, for simple messaging. Likely, that load is so little it won’t even affect your battery life.

      • fer0n@lemm.eeOP
        5·
        1 year ago

        Wouldn’t you still need a server in between to temporarily store the messages if the other person isn’t available?

          • fer0n@lemm.eeOP
            14·
            1 year ago

            Wouldn’t that mean both have to have a connection at the same time? What if one is offline?

              • Kaldo@kbin.social
                11·
                1 year ago

                You can also just hook up any old phone or computer, install the app, and let it run as the server.

                If you have a static IP address, if you want to bother with securing and maintaining it, if you’re willing to deal with downtime when something inevitably breaks, if you’re willing to deal with lost data or also maintaining a backup solution, if… a dozen other things that most people don’t want to deal with.

                  • Kaldo@kbin.social
                    2·
                    1 year ago

                    Keet is closed-source app with built-in crypto, I am not touching it with a 10ft pole. Holepunch does sound like interesting technology at first glance. It doesn’t solve any of the issues mentioned above besides connectivity however.

                • admiralteal@kbin.social
                  1·
                  1 year ago

                  Sure, but you also just… don’t have to do that. None of that is necessary fore core functionality of a messaging service, IF you stipulate that both devices must be online at the same time to ping each other.

                  The only thing you need is some very basic addressing service so they can find each other, and there are entirely P2P solutions for this that already exist and work without issue. See: bittorrent.

                  The ONLY drawback of having no server, fundamentally, is that the two devices need synchronicity. If they both aren’t online at once, messages won’t get delivered. Which is not a big deal for a modern smartphone given that most of them are online close to all of the time.

                  • Kaldo@kbin.social
                    6·
                    1 year ago

                    I’m not really going to get into the technical aspect since I feel neither of us know enough to tell how feasible it is (although I think you’re wrong since you do need trackers in order to find at least one other member of the swarm), but this part

                    If they both aren’t online at once, messages won’t get delivered. Which is not a big deal for a modern smartphone given that most of them are online close to all of the time.

                    I just a horrible take. You can’t base your business model on “modern phones being online close to all of the time”. You can’t have random data loss whenever someone goes out of service area, has to turn on airplane mode, runs out of battery, has a software error or just an update or some other kind of temporary downtime? That’s not how you design any software, less alone a dependable messaging service. You can’t just “stipulate that”.