Under Meredith Whittaker, Signal Is Out to Prove Surveillance Capitalism Wrong

I wish Signal was developed more openly, more like the linux kernel for a "critical infrastructure" example. I wish it had more features, so it could take the place of something like Slack. I wish it supported interoperability like fedi.

But it's good for what it is and I sure am glad it's around. People who disrespect it don't know what they're talking about.

This is a very rude question, but on this subject of being lean, I looked up your 990 and you pay yourself less than some of your engineers.

Yes, and our goal is to pay people as close to Silicon Valley’s salaries as possible, so we can recruit very senior people, knowing that we don’t have equity to offer them. We pay engineers very well. [Leans in performatively toward the phone recording the interview.] If anyone’s looking for a job, we pay very, very well.

So, I googled their tax filing out of curiosity. It's true that Meredith pays herself much less than her engineers, which is great. What I was rather shocked to see is that they pay their software developers enormous salaries. They're listing developers making over $400,000 per year, with their VP making over $660,000 per year. Now, I'm all for the value-creators making more money than the CEO. I just had no idea that software developers make that kind of coin. I was thinking of donating to Signal, but I'm kind of weirded out by those astronomical salaries.

My only gripe with signal, is the use of phone numbers as usernames. Not everyone with whom I want to communicate via signal has a phone number. I understand why they went this route, but wish there was an alternative way.

Signal is the best thing going on in tech these days. I’m very glad it’s being led by Meredith Whittaker.

Did you know you can get a cool badge on your profile pic if you’re a recurring donor? $5 a month is far less than the value I get from it, but that’s all it takes for a cool badge (and knowing that you’re doing something active against the awful state of big tech today).

As long as they stay away from public 'channels.'

There lie dragons.

What is signal anyway? I've never paid attention to phone apps much. Why isn't it on F-droid if it's FOSS? Is it like irc but with encryption? I guess I should look into it.

Nobody is going to use Signal when it lacks so many features. Feels like MSN messenger compared to it's peers.

How much signal and she spend onnthis shameless self promotion.

JFC, if anything she is taking signal the wrong way and going the way of mozilla IMHO

Signal is a good product but there is a lot areas where it can do better... Have gotten any new features over last 5 years? Besides aliases?

What are they working on?

Seen interesting discussions about how signal is farming our meta data to the feds, I was clowned a few years back on this hot take. I am very regarded though. Can anyone pitch on this tinfoil?

Main looking to understand if that is even technically feasible?

Wasn't there some controversy about Signal's creation being supported by the US government to provide private communications for anti-us-enemy organisation or something? I'm sure I remember it correctly...

I love the idea of signal, and want to use it and invite friends to it. But then I remember I don't really want to message anyone, and don't really have friends because I have no interest in messaging people.