On November 16th, Meredith Whittaker, President of Signal, published a detailed breakdown of the popular encrypted messaging app’s running costs for the very first time. The unprecedented disclosure’s motivation was simple - the platform is rapidly running out of money, and in dire need of donations to stay afloat. Unmentioned by Whittaker, this budget shortfall results in large part due to the US intelligence community, which lavishly financed Signal’s creation and maintenance over several years, severing its support for the app.

On November 16th, Meredith Whittaker, President of Signal, published a detailed breakdown of the popular encrypted messaging app’s running costs for the very first time. The unprecedented disclosure’s motivation was simple - the platform is rapidly running out of money, and in dire need of donations to stay afloat. Unmentioned by Whittaker, this budget shortfall results in large part due to the US intelligence community, which lavishly financed Signal’s creation and maintenance over several years, severing its support for the app.

Never acknowledged in any serious way by the mainstream media, Signal’s origins as a US government asset are a matter of extensive public record, even if the scope and scale of the funding provided has until now been secret. The app, brainchild of shadowy tech guru ‘Moxie Marlinspike’ (real name Matthew Rosenfeld), was launched in 2013 by his now-defunct Open Whisper Systems (OWS). The company never published financial statements or disclosed the identities of its funders at any point during its operation.

Sums involved in developing, launching and running a messaging app used by countless people globally were nonetheless surely significant. The newly-published financial records indicate Signal’s operating costs for 2023 alone are $40 million, and projected to rise to $50 million by 2025. Rosenfeld boasted in 2018 that OWS “never [took] VC funding or sought investment” at any point, although mysteriously failed to mention millions were provided by Open Technology Fund (OTF).

OTF was launched in 2012 as a pilot program of Radio Free Asia (RFA), an asset of US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which is funded by US Congress to the tune of over $1 billion annually. In August 2018, its then-CEO openly acknowledged the Agency’s “global priorities…reflect US national security and public diplomacy interests.”

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  • LWD@lemm.ee
    45·
    11 months ago

    Via this excellent write-up from @Pfosten@feddit.de :

    This article is ahistoric and unnecessarily conspirational.

    Signal and its predecessors like TextSecure have been run by different companies/organizations:

    • Whisper Systems
    • Open Whisper Systems
    • Signal Technology Foundation (and its subsidiary Signal Messenger LLC)

    Open Whisper Systems received about 3M USD total from the US government via the Open Technology Fund for the purpose of technology development … during 2013 to 2016. Source: archive of the OTF website: https://web.archive.org/web/20221015073552/https://www.opentech.fund/results/supported-projects/open-whisper-systems/

    The Signal Foundation (founded 2018) was started by an 105M USD interest free loan from Brian Acton, known for co-founding WhatsApp and selling it to Facebook (now Meta).

    So important key insights:

    • It doesn’t seem like the Signal Foundation received US government funding. (Though I haven’t checked financial statements.)
    • The US government funding seems to be a thing of the fairly distant past (2016). The article makes it sound like the funding was just pulled this year.
    • The US government funding was small compared to Signal’s current annual budget. It was not small at the time, but now Signal regularly makes more from licensing its technology than it regularly received from the US government. According to ProPublica, Signals financial statements for 2022 indicate revenue of about 26M USD
    • Joe Bidet@lemmy.ml
      114·
      11 months ago

      yet it’s fair to say that:

      • Signal was incepted by US gov funds
      • During most of it’s initial conception phase it was US gov funded
      • therefore some of the characteristics its users still suffer today (like reliance on strong selectors, pinky-promise of non-retaining metadata, centralized architecture based on the same “cloud” as the one of the CIA and other decisions hostile to free/libre software users and ethics) originate from that era.
      • LWD@lemm.ee
        71·
        11 months ago

        No, it’s not.

        • The precursor of Signal began in 2010.
        • Signal received multiple grants.
        • Even if there was only one grant, you can’t just assume the US government was telling them what to do.

        Next time you make wild clams, make sure to back them up

        • Joe Bidet@lemmy.ml
          41·
          11 months ago

          “Between 2013 and 2016, Open Whisper Systems received grants from the Shuttleworth Foundation,[49] the Knight Foundation,[50] and the Open Technology Fund.[51]”

          “Marlinspike launched Open Whisper Systems’ website in January 2013.[2][1]”

          (from the page you linked)

          How is that not the OTF (100% funded by Radio Free Asia) since its inception? how is it not its initial conception phase?

          • LWD@lemm.ee
            2·
            11 months ago

            “It received some funding in 2013” is a huge scaling back of your initial claims, even though you somehow managed to ignore me mentioning 2010 and 2018.

            • Joe Bidet@lemmy.ml
              1·
              11 months ago

              well before 2013 it wasnt “Signal” but some proprietary software. After 2016 it wasn’t anymore “the initial phase”

              Funny how you don’t seem to be wanting to see 2013-2016, but it’s OK. facts speak for themselves :)