Privacy is Priceless, but Signal is Expensive
Privacy is Priceless, but Signal is Expensive
Signal is the world’s most widely used truly private messaging app, and our cryptographic technologies provide extra layers of privacy beyond the Signal app itself. Since launching in 2013, the Signal Protocol—our end-to-end encryption technology—has become the de facto standard for private commu...
We estimate that by 2025, Signal will require approximately $50 million dollars a year to operate—and this is very lean compared to other popular messaging apps that don’t respect your privacy.
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Funnily enough their biggest expense (sending SMS during registration) is making the accounts less private.
I imagine not paying for it and being overloaded with spam bots would be more expensive (otherwise they wouldn't be doing it this way!)
There are lots of reasons to want fewer spam bots and verified identities other than cost.
Privacy and anonymity are not the same thing.
Anonymity is a form of privacy. While for most people it's not necessary to be anonymous to have privacy, it's essential in some cases, like whistleblowers or people living under dictatorships (or even in some democracies where governments keeps trying to get their paws on all metadata).