[dustinmoris]

You uninstall WhatsApp and tell your closest family and friends that they can only reach you on Signal. Because you are so important to them, they will install Signal as a backup/secondary app. Other people will do the same, and it will snowball into everyone having Signal installed and at some point people will realise that the network effect is gone.

[boraoztunc]

This is happening. First they get surprised that communication is possible beyond WA, even exactly the same. My mother's reaction was hilarious after sending me photos from Signal, free of charge. She was thinking only WA is free, every other app will charge her. I had to explain that calling, voice or video is also possible, without any payment.

[voidmain0001]

How is free sustainable for Signal? I understand why WA is free based on data collection, but Signal just seems too benevolent toward its users. I read up on Signal Foundation (Acton and Marlinspike) as a non-profit which is being buoyed along by $100M from Acton. Mozilla is a non profit too, but it gets money from Google for placing Google search in Firefox. Where is the long term cash flow for Signal?

[ssivark]

I wouldn’t be surprised if the WhatsApp founders, between the two of them, can easily sponsor Signal’s lean team for decades. (Since they’ve shown the inclination with substantive initial investments already, I’d imagine that they’ll happily keep funding if Signal continues to be used)

[pmlnr]

I was looking for this information as well. They have a donation page - https://www.signal.org/donate/ - unlike the Mozilla Foundation/Firefox, so if enough people decide to use it, and to make regular(ish) donations, it could work. See Wikipedia.

[godelski]

How much does it cost to run such a system and pay a dozen employees? $10m a year? Besides donation Signal does get money from the US gov because while we complain about encryption here we also realize that giving people in other countries an encrypted free form of communication helps them be freer. Our military also encourages the use because it is better that soldiers talk to their wives, partners, friends with that app than an unencrypted means and have the potential for blackmail. Same goes for politicians and many famous people (Joe Rogan recently mentioned he uses it). There is a strange dichotomy of pro and anti-encryption with the gov. But Signal does have a lot of funders and it isn't just your average person.

[ValentineC]

> You uninstall WhatsApp and tell your closest family and friends that they can only reach you on Signal. Because you are so important to them, they will install Signal as a backup/secondary app.

I'll be the one friend that'll insist on SMS/email. I’ll even offer to use some other supposedly encrypted method like Keybase or Matrix. If that doesn't work as a fallback, then I guess we can agree to disagree, and someone else can play the middleperson for us. :)

I refuse to use Signal because it doesn't offer chat sync, or message preservation if I either lose or have to wipe my phone.

[thekyle]

One of the benefits of Signal is that it can also do SMS on Android, so it works great with people like you who insist on using that. Your SMS messages will appear right alongside the native Signal ones in the app.

[aidenn0]

You can backup your signal message DB; maybe not as nice as iCloud, but I guess you get what you pay for?

[pmlnr]

> I refuse to use Signal because it doesn't offer chat sync

Install Pidgin with signald ;)

[fsdfgsfsdfsdfsd]

How do you sync and preserve your SMS? Whenever I migrate phones, it is always the most painful part.

[ValentineC]

I back my messages up to iCloud.

For Android devices, I've been using the SMS Backup & Restore app [1] since Android ~2.1 or so.

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.riteshsahu...

[cedricbonhomme]

This is working for me. I am already using Matrix and now my parents are ready to switch to Matrix (with Element). Thank you Facebook.

[juniperplant]

Been there, done that.

I can state that it's a bit unrealistic to expect this kind of outcome.