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.
  • @cjf@feddit.ukEnglish
    14•1 year ago

    This is certainly one way to spin this.

    It doesn’t touch on all the other donations signal receives, including the major loan from Brian Acton. The OTF isn’t the only source of funding that signal has.

    Signal will be fine. In fact now that the OTF have withdrawn funding it’ll probably shake off the weird take that Signal is CIA tech.

    • @bobgusford@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7•1 year ago

      OTF funding is also not a direct indication of funding from US intelligence or backdoors in the code. OTF could just be promoting development of software that breaks free of repressive regimes, which indirectly benefits US foreign policy.