[grier]

> a non-profit organization

> should be taken into account when comparing the goals and motivations of organizations developing various other communicators.

Business or funding models can change for both for- and non-profit organizations. Especially as people move to options that are believed to have better user-privacy, the idea that they do not sell/monetize collected user data today does not indicate what they will do tomorrow.

Unless users have strong evidence that companies are not collecting and/or monetizing this information (which as the OP pointed out, there is for Signal as found in a subpoena), the "billboard" approach towards promising user privacy via marketing and PR is a shallow one at best for non-profits as well as for-profit companies.

[spicybright]

Whenever I see an ad flaunting privacy guarantees, I ask myself "How would a honey pot for gathering user's information be advertised?" Exactly the same way.

That said, at the end of the day you have to trust SOMEONE if you want to use digital communications. And there's certainly a difference between facebook and GPG email encryption.

It's just a matter of balancing convenience and privacy for your personal use case.