Where did I accuse them of selling data right now? I’m simply noting the risk that they will have to cover the insane costs of their inefficient infrastructure through either becoming a paid app or collecting data to sell.

And my point is that since their costs are so high they will either have to become a paid app or start collecting data to sell. Or become more efficient but you’d think if they knew how they’d already done that.

I think the main red flag is that they are spending so much money. In 2023 they had 55m monthly active users and they spent $35m. The casual WhatsApp user that might switch to Signal is definitely not gonna pay for this so either Signal fans have to donate more or Signal has to start finding other monetization which if we look at other companies means selling private data.

(Also, half their spending is on hosting and they are not self hosting so a donation to Signal is basically a donation to Amazon and Google.)