YouSaid · the spoken record

Meredith Whittaker

lines on the record: 94
first: 2022-10-18
most recent: 2022-10-18
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“No So, Signal is in India right now. India has claimed Signal is sought in compliance with some regulations there that would require one of these magical thinking backdoors. Are you going to leave India? You're going to stay there. Are you going to fight? How's that going to work?”
2022-10-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Signal won’t compromise on encryption, with president Meredith Whittaker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let the record show hell no, we're not going to do that. No. I mean, and this is, again, like let's like flip this and talk about the business model. Apple is doing that because every quarter, they have to report their growth and revenue stats to the board. And if those stats are like, you know, not looking to acquire a new but unacquired market, then eventually their executive team is going to get fired and new people brought in because the imperative of their company to put this in machine learning terms, the objective function of their company is increasing profit and growth forever. Like literally the definition of metastasis, right? That's not us, right? Like we don't need to do that. We do not need to make those compromises like myself and our CEO will not get fired if we're not sort of bringing new market strategies however twisted the compromise is to the board. We have a different mission and a different set of.”
2022-10-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Signal won’t compromise on encryption, with president Meredith Whittaker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. So putting this out there Apple's solution to this problem because China is a gigantic market for Apple and its devices is to say i message is encrypted but to allow a state operated company to actually run the iCloud data centers in China, which seems like a, right? They have threaded the needle in a way that allows them to claim the thing they want to claim, even though the government holds the encryption keys. You're not going to do that. You're not even allowing for a solution like that to exist.”
2022-10-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Signal won’t compromise on encryption, with president Meredith Whittaker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Don't keep its privacy promises, and then there's no real point for us to exist as a nonprofit whose sole mission is to provide a safe, private, pleasant place for messaging and communication in a world where those are vanishingly few and far between. It's signal. And then there are a number of other services, but because very few people use them, they're very much, much, much, much, much less useful to most people who pick them up and try them.”
2022-10-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Signal won’t compromise on encryption, with president Meredith Whittaker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, full stop, we're not going to compromise. And that would imply that we are sort of in a negotiating stance. And again, this is sort of the magical thinking that comes up. I've been in tech almost 20 years, so I've seen this sort of recur, right? And it's this desire, particularly by state actors, to kind of like break encryption for their purposes without understanding that that breaks it fundamentally across the board. So, you know, there's no, I don't know, this sounds like a little bit dated, you know, there's no compromising with math, I guess is what I'll say, right? Like if encryption is broken, it is broken and then signal.”
2022-10-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Signal won’t compromise on encryption, with president Meredith Whittaker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm saying, like, Yeah, right. You're not sure. You're not doing like Uber style and guerrilla user acquisition in China. You're not actively talking to Chinese government about what it would mean for Signal to be active in the Chinese market.”
2022-10-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Signal won’t compromise on encryption, with president Meredith Whittaker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, I don't know what going into China would mean like, you know, a ticket to Beijing handout, you know, QR codes. I don't know. I'm saying like we're not doing that, but”
2022-10-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Signal won’t compromise on encryption, with president Meredith Whittaker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, let's be clear, we are not in the business of compromising on privacy. And we're not in the business of handing people who want and need signal a compromised version of signal, which we're not going to do, right? But are there people in South and East Asia who want to be able to talk privately, safely, intimately outside of the gaze of corporate state surveillance? Absolutely. Do we want them to have access to Signal? Absolutely we do, right? You know, do we want Signal to be available there? Yes, can we kind of magically transform the geopolitical dynamics? No, we can't. But, you know, we will do what is within our power to make sure that signal is available to as many people as possible. And we will do that without compromising our privacy promises.”
2022-10-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Signal won’t compromise on encryption, with president Meredith Whittaker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I asked the question that way because there's what somewhere between it's a little under 8 billion people on the planet. 1.7 billion of those people live in China, which is block signal. One and a half billion of those people live in India, which the government does not like encryption. Just off the bat are those markets that you want to go into? Are those fights you want to have? Are those compromises you would make? Or are those people just off the books for you?”
2022-10-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Signal won’t compromise on encryption, with president Meredith Whittaker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The goal is everyone who wants to, needs to, has a smartphone, right? Everyone on the planet, yes, that is the goal, but it's also that just that almost like abstracts it into the land of fantasy, right? I don't have the latest numbers, but not everyone on the planet has access to internet, right? Not everyone on the planet has access to a smartphone that's running an operating system that can support Signal, right? So there's sort of planetary distinctions and inequities in context that mean that I feel like throwing that out would just be like a bombastic tech founder kind of goal and not actually anchored in reality. However, like every Only three people use is only useful and secure and private to three people, right? So we want, you know, we really want that network effect because that's what makes messaging work.”
2022-10-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Signal won’t compromise on encryption, with president Meredith Whittaker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So let's talk about growth. We've mentioned it by different names several times. I understand exactly why you don't want to use the word growth that implies a bunch of Silicon Valley tropes, but you want to add users to signal. And so growth is a... Is fundamentally the thing you're talking about user growth.”
2022-10-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Signal won’t compromise on encryption, with president Meredith Whittaker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, the best job they can, and that they have all the resources and insight I have to give and all the resources and insight that the org can offer as well.”
2022-10-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Signal won’t compromise on encryption, with president Meredith Whittaker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What is the timeline for impact? What is the initial vision? And at that stage, I see myself as a champion and a supporter, right? Like, how do I back this person up? How do I make sure they are sort of elevated to do?”
2022-10-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Signal won’t compromise on encryption, with president Meredith Whittaker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There are interviews. We want to make sure that this is somebody that leadership and the team feel just wildly enthusiastic about, right? Somebody who just lights up every interview and is sort of clearly showing their knowledge of signal and their vision and their insight about the space. And then we get really excited about that person. We pop virtual champagne and then we have a board meeting and the board votes. And then, you know, there's all sorts of, you know, this sort of background logistics, right? You would need to make sure somebody can transition out of another role if you're hiring a CEO. They probably have significant responsibilities. So you create an offboarding and onboarding timeline. You work with them on that. You meet, you make sure they have all of the documentation and information they need. You sort of think about the sort of classic timeline is like first hundred days for executives. But what is the”
2022-10-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Signal won’t compromise on encryption, with president Meredith Whittaker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Inward focus getting everything on rails. And this is not to say things aren't on Rails now, but if you're preparing for growth, if you're preparing to meet this moment to really recognize this inflection point and mature the organization, we need somebody who's able to focus inward on those issues.”
2022-10-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Signal won’t compromise on encryption, with president Meredith Whittaker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I think as I have moved through my career and occupied different positions in academia, in tech, very briefly at the Federal Trade Commission, it was just a realization that this is really something I thought a lot about and a place where I could very meaningfully put my time. And it just was clearly the most meaningful thing I could do with my energy and expertise. And I think, you know, what we want from a CEO is also somebody who has on the ground product experience, which I have some of, but I have not been in the messaging space. I just think it would be great to work side by side with that person and to work on the leadership team. But it was, you know, this was a very intentional choice and it was sort of shaped around what I think I do best. And we want to shape the CEO role for somebody who fits those specific needs. And it's really.”
2022-10-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Signal won’t compromise on encryption, with president Meredith Whittaker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, well, one reason is I want to go deep on the areas that I have experience in and that I just love doing, right? And this was, you know, this was a role I talked to the board for a long time. And this was a role that we sort of shaped around some of my interest and around some of my, you know, it's not increasing realization, right? Like I think I've always been a massive signal booster. I use Signal when it was called Red Phone and Tech Secure like way back in the day before there was an iOS app.”
2022-10-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Signal won’t compromise on encryption, with president Meredith Whittaker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That experience, but who also has sensibilities that will enable them to sort of discern the differences between a signal and between X, Y, Zocial app that's a shim for data collection that goes into some DOD algorithm or something. The truly dark side of tech.”
2022-10-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Signal won’t compromise on encryption, with president Meredith Whittaker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, I think we're looking for somebody with stellar product experience. We want somebody who can really focus in on the organization. So how do we get our development practices and coordination as cleanly calibrated and well-oiled as possible? How do we think about scaling this organization, growing this organization, growing our users, ensuring that we are choosing the right features and innovations to function on while understanding that this is not your average tech startup, right? That our growth is in service of something different, that our organization does have the luxury to say no to certain choices, to reject the move quick and break things paradigm if that's not going to serve our ultimate mission. So I think it's somebody with those who has”
2022-10-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Signal won’t compromise on encryption, with president Meredith Whittaker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let's do it over. And I think there's kind of a combination of iterating and learning on the go in while being sensitive to what is our”
2022-10-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Signal won’t compromise on encryption, with president Meredith Whittaker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it will be again some combination of instinct like when is this worked well in the past? When is it not, right? Like the benefit of having been in this industry for almost 20 years is you just like build up a big set of experiences and there's a lot of like pitfalls you've fallen into before so you can avoid them. And then I think there's also sort of a, you know, it needs to be accompanied with humility. Like this is the decision we're making. Here is the basis for this decision, which I'm really committed to making sure everyone understands my basis, right? Like this is why this decision is made. You don't have to agree, but you can see the logic that led me to it, right? And then if it, you know, how do we measure that it's the right decision, right? What are the benchmarks we're looking at going forward and how do I remain willing to say like, look, that was wrong. You know, let's back up because clearly it's not going the direction we wanted it to go. So, you know, let's recalibrate. Let's look into our assumptions.”
2022-10-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Signal won’t compromise on encryption, with president Meredith Whittaker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, it is a combination of as much research as I need to do until I'm satisfied I have the ground truth around something. So I will ask very dumb questions until I am sure that there isn't some trick or some sort of issue that I haven't fully understood. That means I'll read academic papers or I'll call people who've worked in a certain sector or I will reach out to a mentor who maybe doesn't know much about the space but has a sense of dynamics and might, you know, lend a different eye, right? I basically have as big a toolbox as I can and I will pull from any tool that it feels useful. And then, you know,”
2022-10-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Signal won’t compromise on encryption, with president Meredith Whittaker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't have a flowchart for decisions, right? I don't have like, you know, my VC Twitter thread, like the three things I know about decision making.”
2022-10-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Signal won’t compromise on encryption, with president Meredith Whittaker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I've consciously avoided some of those terms because they're so closely aligned with profit motives. And I don't want to be misunderstood. Yes, of course we want to grow because our mission is to provide truly private communication to anyone who wants it across the globe at any time. So we grow so that we can fulfill our mission, not so that we can just, you know, we're not looking at like growth hacking or adding weird features to get an inflated boost. We're looking at how do we actually reach the people who do need to use this tech, reach the people who want a convenient messaging service and sort of ensure that they are able to use Signal quickly and easily, that they know about it, that when they open it up, all their friends are there, that it's a seamless and pleasant experience. So yes, I think you can put it in those terms. I have intentionally not put it in those terms because I want to, you know, not even echo the language of the alternatives, which are doing.”
2022-10-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Signal won’t compromise on encryption, with president Meredith Whittaker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“An open source project on a shoestring. Big thanks to Moxie Marlin Spike, Tyler Reinhardt, a number of the sort of original folks at Signal who made a bunch of sacrifices and worked extremely hard to get this effort off the ground in the last few years. Signal has matured and I would say is at an inflection point as an organization. It's time to take the next step. We have over $100 million downloads in the Play Store, but what does it look like when we reach the next stage and are serving hundreds of millions of people across the globe? And how do we build a signal that can really meet this moment? And I think sustainability is definitely part of that. What is a business model that I don't think has been done yet that can sustain technology like Signal Outside of the surveillance paradigm?”
2022-10-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Signal won’t compromise on encryption, with president Meredith Whittaker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“About the global landscape that regulatory and legislative landscape and how that affects signal, how do we think about that during a product development process? How do we think about that in terms of our high-level strategy? And then I will also be working with the leadership team to direct strategy. So we're at, you know, as an organization, we grew from what I would characterize as a passion driven hypothesis project. This was”
2022-10-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Signal won’t compromise on encryption, with president Meredith Whittaker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of the monopoly power of big tech, but not many actions people can do when they're like, I feel really uncomfortable with this, but what do we do, right? It kind of interpolates our entire life. So, you know, I think getting the word out there, the signal is truly different, and then building that network effect of encrypted communications. So anyone who picks up Signal can talk to anyone they want to on signal without having to think about it, without having to be a privacy ideologue, right? It's not, you know. My friends aren't just cryptographers who live in Berlin. My friends are a number of people with varied interests. Some truly probably don't care about privacy. But nonetheless, they're cool people I like to hang out with them, right? So I need to be able to reach them on that app. And if they're not there, Signal is significantly less useful to me. So, you know, I'm going to be working on that narrative aspect. I'm also, you know, I mentioned policy awareness. So that is just, you know, thinking.”
2022-10-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Signal won’t compromise on encryption, with president Meredith Whittaker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I have core lanes in that role. And to back up for a second, I've been on the board for a number of years. I've worked with Moxie and kind of a community. There's a kind of an open source community of folks who think hard about technical privacy preservation. And I've been in and out of that community for almost a decade now. So I'm very familiar with the folks in this space. I'm familiar with the folks at Signal. And so this was almost like a gradual transition into this role of just like intensifying my attention to signal until my whole work life in this role. I'm going to be, you know, I'm going to be focusing on the narrative aspect, like how do we communicate what signal is, why it's so wonderful to people who might want to use it, right? And this is particularly in an environment where there is increasing understanding of the harms of the surveillance business model, increasing understanding.”
2022-10-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Signal won’t compromise on encryption, with president Meredith Whittaker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of labor, constant vigilance, constantly squashing bugs, constantly thinking about new features, making sure there's parity across all the versions. It is endless and difficult work. And I'm happy to be working with the people.”
2022-10-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Signal won’t compromise on encryption, with president Meredith Whittaker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Primarily developers, but of course, like development isn't just sort of submitting a pull request, right? We also have a really talented, you know, what we call the user voice team. And those are the people who engage with the community. Those are the people who do a little bit of QA, tests for bugs. I am tasked in my new role with sort of bringing policy awareness so we don't have a policy team, but that is something I'm working on what the right calibration there is for Signal and kind of bringing in my network and my many years of work on those topics. And then we have what I'll characterize as like a narrative team. We have writers, we have people who think about how we translate kind of arcane concepts to people who rely on Signal in a way that they'll actually understand and we have folks like that, but it is primarily developers because what we do is produce high availability app across three platforms, which takes a lot.”
2022-10-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Signal won’t compromise on encryption, with president Meredith Whittaker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's mostly engineers. We have a, you know, it's not a very complex organization by which I'm avoiding using the term flat because it is not flat, but it doesn't have many layers of bureaucracy. There's a leadership team. We have a COO. We have myself as president. We have a director of products. We have two engineering executives, one that looks more at architecture, one that looks more at people management. And then we have Brian Acton as acting CEO. I'm like imagining in my head the kind of org chart right now. That's the”
2022-10-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Signal won’t compromise on encryption, with president Meredith Whittaker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't have a spreadsheet in front of me, and big tech is a big amorphous entity. So big tech in Europe or big tech in Palo Alto, there are a lot of variables there. But what I can say straight up is we are competitive.”
2022-10-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Signal won’t compromise on encryption, with president Meredith Whittaker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We are, we do have competitive salaries. I think that's part of Signal as an organization also has a labor politics. We want to make sure we're compensating people. We want to make sure that people aren't being asked to sacrifice their lives standard of living to come work for Signal. We want to hire the best people we can find. So we do have competitive salaries. Of course, we don't have equity. So that's not part of the package, but we are a fully distributed organization. So there is flexibility with where you live, which communities you might be able to live in. And there is also, you know, we have other benefits that we think make it a great working environment for people who want to apply their talents to something outside of the surveillance tech ecosystem.”
2022-10-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Signal won’t compromise on encryption, with president Meredith Whittaker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, people do it. There are many of those. We don't, because we can't guarantee them. Because we can't validate them because we don't have the time or the resources for that. We don't endorse them. Yeah, but there are many out there.”
2022-10-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Signal won’t compromise on encryption, with president Meredith Whittaker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which other companies have chosen to use because it's the best. We rely on that vigilant community and we rely on transparency and the kind of community auditing.”
2022-10-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Signal won’t compromise on encryption, with president Meredith Whittaker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, well, Signal makes its code open source. It makes the signal protocol and the key cryptographic primitives that we use to ensure privacy and security open for review. So a big part of our model is telling people not to take our word for it. The people who do have the specialized training and skill have engaged thousands and thousands of hours pouring over our code. There are people in the signal community forums who every time we have a new piece of code that drops on GitHub sort of look at it, comment on it, deduce what features might be coming through that so there is an active and vigilant community that actually sort of checks signals claims against the code, against the cryptographic protocol we use and time and time again our cryptographic protocol again is not just used by Signal, right? This is what Facebook uses.”
2022-10-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Signal won’t compromise on encryption, with president Meredith Whittaker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Access to that data. We don't buy, sell, trade your data. So it is a different paradigm. And I think we can't point to whatsapp, however slick their marketing is and say that is truly secure and private because all of these details add up to us needing to conclude that it is not, well, signal exists solely for that purpose.”
2022-10-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Signal won’t compromise on encryption, with president Meredith Whittaker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Collect that data that is also owned by meta Facebook. So Facebook has a huge amount, just unspeakable volumes of intimate information about billions of people across the globe. And so it is not trivial to point out that WhatsApp metadata could easily be joined with Facebook data, could easily reveal extremely intimate information about people and the choice to remove or enhance the encryption protocols is still in the hands of Facebook. So we have to look structurally at what that organization is, who actually has control over these decisions and look at some of these details that don't often get discussed when we talk about sort of message encryption overall. Signal, again, is a nonprofit. We don't have any access to data like Facebook. We avoid having”
2022-10-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Signal won’t compromise on encryption, with president Meredith Whittaker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, let's take WhatsApp as a specific example Again, WhatsApp uses the signal encryption protocol to provide encryption for its messages. And that was absolutely a visionary choice and something that Brian and his.”
2022-10-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Signal won’t compromise on encryption, with president Meredith Whittaker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And relies on a more nonprofit model than on a model where we are secretly monetizing data in the background or otherwise, again, participating in the surveillance business model, which is the dominant paradigm across the tech industry.”
2022-10-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Signal won’t compromise on encryption, with president Meredith Whittaker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Signal Foundation is a nonprofit, the Signal Messenger LLC is part, is under that nonprofit umbrella, and the foundation exists solely to support the messaging app. So in kind of more colloquial terms, we can think of Signal as a nonprofit. It is a nonprofit, which means we don't have shareholders, we don't have equity, so we are not being structurally incentivized to prioritize profit and growth over our core mission. And you're not going to see a billion dollar exit coming. So we're not just biding our time until we can get rich and move to a super yacht. So it is a different structure. It is a different model. That doesn't mean it's any cheaper to develop signal than it is to develop a high availability surveillance messaging service. We are counting on a sustainability model that relies on donation.”
2022-10-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Signal won’t compromise on encryption, with president Meredith Whittaker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Signal is really interesting because it has this non profit foundation. It sits over the top of it. One of the reasons a surveillance business model exists is because that is an easy way to make a lot of money. Signals obviously not doing that. There is a stun profit. How is it structured? How does it all work?”
2022-10-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Signal won’t compromise on encryption, with president Meredith Whittaker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. Signal is the most widely used, truly private messaging app on the market. It's used by millions and millions of people globally. And for people who use Signal, it may feel similar to other messaging apps. You open it, you send a meme, you get party directions, you close it when you're done talking to your friends. But below the surface signal is very different. truly private. We go to great lengths not only to keep the contents of your messages, who you're talking to, etc. private, but to keep, you know, to collect as little data as possible while providing a functional service. So we differ from our competitors in that our mission is to provide a private app and in that we are not in any Connected to the surveillance business model. So we have a very different model and a very different mission”
2022-10-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Signal won’t compromise on encryption, with president Meredith Whittaker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Especially encrypted messaging apps are a complicated business. Governments around the world really dislike encrypted messaging and often push companies to put in back doors for surveillance and law enforcement. Because yeah, criminals use encrypted messaging for all sorts of deeply evil things. But the thing is there's no half step to breaking encryption. You either have it or you don't. So companies like Signal often find themselves in a difficult position of refusing to help governments. You might recall that Apple has refused to help the FBI break into iPhones, for example. I wanted to know how that trade-off plays out. It signals much smaller scale and with signals much more idealistic mission. There's just the basic reality of messaging apps. You have to get users. You have to have enough people on the platform so that the network is really valuable. So you choose signal to message someone instead of something else. You have to add features. You have to have customer support. The whole thing.”
2022-10-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Signal won’t compromise on encryption, with president Meredith Whittaker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT