Nuked Whatsapp users around the world began seeing a pop-up message on January 6th. The changes were designed to enable businesses to send and store messages to WhatsApp’s 2 billion-plus users. They came with an ultimatum: agree by February 8th, or you can no longer use the app.
Signal, the encrypted messaging app, has about 20 million users worldwide. In a 12-hour period the Sunday after WhatsApp’s privacy policy update began, signal added another 2 million users. In the meantime, tens of millions of users began seeking alternatives to Facebook’s suite of products.
Signal still has a small fraction of the market for mobile messaging. The rapid growth has been a cause for excitement inside the small distributed team that makes the app.
Adding millions of users has served as vindication for a company that has sought to build a healthier Internet by adopting different incentives than most Silicon Valley companies.
Signal’s mission, by contrast, is to promote privacy through end-to-end encryption, without any commercial motive. Signal’s CEO Moxie Marlinspike said the way the Internet currently works is’insane’.
Signal employees raised questions about the development and addition of new features that will lead the platform to be used in dangerous and even harmful ways. The company has pursued a goal to hit 100 million active users and generate enough donations to secure signal’s long-term future.
Employees worry that, should signal fail to build policies and enforcement mechanisms to identify and remove bad actors. The fallout could bring more negative attention to encryption technologies from regulators at a time when their existence is threatened around the world.
Gregg Bernstein, a former user researcher, left the organization this month over his concerns.’signal does n’t have these policies in place, but they’ve been resistant to even considering what a policy might look like,’ he said.
Interviews with current and former employees, plus leaked screenshots of internal deliberations, paint a portrait of a company that is justly proud of its role in promoting privacy. Their comments raise the question of whether a company conceived as a rebuke to data-hungry, ad-funded communication tools like Facebook and WhatsApp will really be so different.
Like a lot of problems, this one started with an imperative familiar to most businesses: growth. The goal was to help businesses with growth, but it was n’t a good thing.
Not even signal itself can see their messages – much less law enforcement or national security agencies. The app saw a surge in usage during last year’s protests for racial justice.
‘people who want more control over their data and how it’s used – and who want to exist outside the gaze of tech companies’.
Signal added group links, a feature that has become increasingly common to messaging apps. With a few taps, users could begin creating links that would allow anyone to join a chat in a group as large as 1,000 people. Signal itself would have no record of the group’s title, its members, or the image the group chose as its avatar.
President Trump told the extremist group the proud boys to’stand back and stand by’ during an all-hands meeting. During a debate, president Trump had told the far-right extremist group’to stand back’.
‘until something is a reality, Moxie’s position is he’s not going to deal with it,’ he said.
Bernstein:’you could see a lot of jaws dropping. That’s not a strategy – that’s just hoping things do n’t go bad’.
The company has sought to take a hands-off approach to moderation. Mark nejame: because signal employees ca n’t see the content on their network, the app does not need a robust content policy.
‘we’re not algorithmically amplifying content. We do n’t have access to the content. And even within the app, there are not a lot of opportunities for amplification’.
Signal is developing multiple tools simultaneously that could be ripe for abuse. For years, the company has faced complaints that its require that people use real phone numbers to create accounts raises privacy and security concerns. But usernames (and display names, should the company add those, too) could enable people to impersonate others.
Signal has also been exploring the addition of payments into the app. This has been presented as a way to help people in developing nations transfer funds more easily.
An effort from Facebook to develop a cryptocurrency, now known as Novi, has been repeatedly derailed by skeptical regulators.
Mobilecoin is a cryptocurrency built on the stellar blockchain. It makes payments simple and secure – and, potentially impossible to trace.
People who spoke with said they regard the company’s exploration of cryptocurrency as risky. It could invite more bad actors onto the platform and attract regulatory scrutiny from world leaders.
Some engineering resources have been devoted to developing mobilecoin integrations in recent quarters, former employees said. The company had done some’design explorations’ around the idea.
‘if we did decide we wanted to put payments into signal, we would try to think really carefully about how we did that’.’it’s hard to be totally hypothetical’.
Signal’s development is driven in part by its unusual corporate structure. The app is funded by the signal foundation, which was created in 2018 with a $ 50 million loan from WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton.
Employees have been told that for signal to become self-sustaining, it will need to reach 100 million users. Donations will cover its costs and support the development of additional products that the company has considered, such as email or file storage.
Signal’s initial customer base of activists and journalists will only get it so far. But despite its anti-corporate ethos, signal has set about acquiring users like any other app.
A former head of product security at Twitter whose long career in hacking and cryptography was recently profiled in the New Yorker. Acton, whose title as executive chairman of the signal foundation dramatically understates his involvement in the project’s day-to-day operations.
In 2014, Acton and co-founder Jan Koum sold WhatsApp to Facebook for $ 22 billion, making them both billionaires. Acton told Forbes that his departure was prompted by Facebook’s plans to introduce targeted advertising and commercial messaging into WhatsApp.
Acton caused a stir when he tweeted:’it is time. It’s time. I’m time.’.
He has increasingly devoted his time to building signal. He interviews engineers, screening them for their ideological commitment to encryption technology. He writes code and helps to solve engineering challenges.
Acton could be dismissive of the idea that technology companies should intervene to prevent all forms of abuse. While working at Facebook, he could be dismissed from the idea of technology companies to intervene.
I do n’t like being a nanny company. Let’s stop looking at the technology and start asking questions about the people’.
Signal told me that Acton does not have any role in setting policy for the company company. Acton does n’t have a role in policy, he says.
In recent interviews, Acton has been magnanimous toward his former colleagues. But it’s hard not to see in Acton’s recent work the outlines of a redemption narrative.
Whatsapp co-founder might pull back once it was more fully staffed. Acton’s heavy involvement in day-to-day development was a necessity.
‘he’s been great jumping in and helping where we need help, and helping us scale,’ he said.’this has been an all-hands-on-deck kind of thing,’ said.
Whatsapp was not a’nanny company’, but it seems that neither will be signal. Acton’s growing involvement could help explain the company’s reticence toward implementing content policies.
Signal’s recent growth was a slow burn for three years and then a huge explosion. Acton is proud of signal’s growth.
The app’s appetite for growth, coupled with inattention to potential misuses, threaten its long-term future. Not growing would threaten the long-term future in other ways.
Social networks’ more disturbing consequences are a result of their business model. They take venture capital, pushing them to quickly grow as big as possible. Then, they adopt ad-based business models that reward users who spread misinformation, harass others, and otherwise sow chaos.
Signal’s story shows how changing an organization’s business model does n’t eliminate the potential for platform abuse. The company’s business models are changing their business model to grow, and grow quickly.
Signal employees said they are confident the app has not become a primary organizing tool for extremists. So far, there are no known cases of dangerous organizations posting signal group links on Twitter or other public spaces.
Signal seemed happy to make few efforts to mitigate any harms before they materialize. My sources expressed concern that despite the clear potential for abuse.
‘the thing about software is that you never can fully anticipate everything,’ he said.’we just have to be willing to iterate’.
A failure to plan for abuse scenarios has been linked to calamities around the world. Facebook’s links to genocide in Myanmar, a country in which it originally had no moderators who understood the language it makes signal’s potential path more similar to Facebook than its creators are perhaps prepared to admit.
The comments were made in a conversation on policy and trust and safety. They were asked to hire an employee to work on issues related to safety. This would change or eliminate group links if they were abused on a wide scale.
Marco Rubio: signal not become neutered in pursuit of a false neutrality between good and bad actors. He says signal exists to improve that experience and make it accessible to more people.
I think that the latter have an outsized risk profile. There’s an asymmetric there, where it could end up affecting them more dramatically,’ he said.
‘there are little things he could do to stop signal from becoming a tool for tragic events, while still protecting the integrity of the product for the people who need it the most,’ he said.
While he has advised mobilecoin, he is not on the board of mobilecoin. But he has been advised by mobilecoin, but is n’t on board.
