zlacker

>>mikece+(OP)
Seriously consider setting up a recurring donation if you prefer Signal. They have delivered consistently over the years. I set the $20/month back when they introduced the option.

I'm curious what the breakdown of donations is. I only have 1 contact with a $10/month and 1 with a $5/month badge. Of course there could be others not displaying the badge. Signal really needs 500,000 people giving $20/month and plus the rich guys giving some millions on top of that to be in a safe financial position.

Maybe something that could be done to encourage donations is have the client estimate how much raw infra costs your usage created and display in the donation screen.

>>Canada+kb
I fail to understand the point of supporting an organization that is completely against self-sovereignty like Signal is. Why would I want to pay someone to develop something that traps me into their platform and does not offer a way out?

>>rglull+Vu
Great, you go ahead and get all your friends in family using Matrix. I'll join you there when all that is sorted out and it's practical to get my lawyers and doctors and accountants and friends and family onboard. Until then, we'll keep using Signal.

>>Canada+2l2
First, you talk like Signal never had any issue with usability or functionality, which is far from the truth. Signal amount of bugs and security issues with their client is notorious, and the insistence of requiring phone numbers is just a silly "let them have cake approach" that is conveniently ignored for too long.

Second, are you hedging your bets and supporting Matrix or XMPP as well, or will you only encourage people to "donate" to the platform that you happen to have picked already?

>>rglull+jq2
Yes, I am encouraging people to donate to Signal because I prefer it. Why would I be soliciting donations for something I don't favor? If you want to contribute to something else go right ahead, but this is a thread about Signal's financial needs so it shouldn't surprise you that Signal supporters encourage other supporters to donate.

I also use Matrix. Element has been pretty good for a few years now, but it's still not smooth enough for mainstream use. (Encryption state in chats gets messed up sometimes, for example. It feels like Signal 10 years ago, and it's had security issues in its client also)

The Matrix protocol is also inferior to Signal in that all metadata is stored in cleartext on the server. You get to choose or run a server, but the protocol still leaks the user info to whoever runs the home server and to any foreign server that has a user in the same channel if you are using it in a federated context. Signal manages all of this by peer to peer messages where cleartext is only available to clients, which is really slick.

XMPP is just dead. Forget about XMPP. Matrix is the clear leader in the federated messaging system category. I'd like to see Matrix displace things like Telegram, Discord, and Slack. I may donate to Matrix affiliated projects in the future, as I also donate to other open source projects from time to time, but I'm not going to promote any of those things in this thread.