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Havish Gupta
Figuring Out • 4m
The Story of Signal! So, Signal was started by Moxie Marlinspike, a cryptographer and hacker, in 2010. He believed digital communication was dangerously unprotected, making it easy for governments, corporations, and hackers to spy on messages. This led him to launch two privacy-focused apps; TextSecure, for encrypted messaging and RedPhone, for secure voice calls In 2015, these two merged into Signal. A year before that, Facebook bought WhatsApp for $19 billion. This hefty price raised concerns about privacy, but the network effect kept people stuck to WhatsApp. However, Brian Acton wasn’t a big fan of this. Three years later, in 2017, he left WhatsApp and collaborated with Moxie to start Signal Foundation. Btw, since Brian left WhatsApp early, he had to leave behind $850 million worth of vested stocks out of the $3 billion he received. (Vested stocks are normal stocks that can only be redeemed after spending a set number of years in a company.) But for Brian, privacy was more important. So, he anyways invested $50 million into Signal to start the Signal Foundation. Fast-forward four years to 2021, Signal’s usage skyrocketed! The reason? WhatsApp announced a policy that would allow Facebook to collect more user data from WhatsApp. Right after this, Elon Musk tweeted "Use Signal", causing the app to get 100K downloads in one day, followed by 4 million more downloads in the next week. And it’s not just Elon! Signal is also endorsed by Jack Dorsey, Anand Mahindra, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Kunal Shah, and more. So What Makes Signal Special? 1) End-to-End Encrypted Messaging 2) No Ads, No Subscription as It’s a non-profit 3) It's Open Source so no security concerns 4) Option to Chat also using usernames so no worrying of sharing our phone numbers 5) Most importantly, it keeps your data private! Today, Signal boasts over 70 million active users, remains non-profit & open-source, and completely free with no ads!
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