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Comment by krrrh | Hacker News Reader

They could easily add an optional badge to avatars showing that you donated $1 that year via an optional in-app purchase. The subtle social pressure in a lot of group chats would be pretty effective, and it would help raise awareness that it is run by a non-profit foundation.

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This sounds good on first pass, but consider the implication of allowing donations (and thus, payment method information) to be tied to a Signal users account. I specifically _wouldn't_ want this.

You could enable offsite donations that provide a receipt/hash that denotes (donation -> validated), without being tied to any individual. Then the user could copy/paste a generic, non-correlated code into Signal to authenticate activity.

It's easy. You "gift" the badge to a user via the Signal homepage when making a connection. There's no required connection between the gift-giver and the receiver. Is the person who gifted the badge the same as the receiver? Could very well be, but there's no way to prove that.

All you need to store server-side is "this user has the badge until date X".

> Could very well be, but there's no way to prove that.

Sure, but espionage and surveillance are rarely about proving anything, they're about making good educated guesses. Besides, the receiver will very likely be among your friends and acquaintances, so the NSA would only have to look at your social circle to find them.

Database has one column on the user table:

display_badge_until

Store no payment info.

it is amusing that you think you have fair chance if NSA/government really wants to get you. Buy hey if that makes you sleep at night be my guest.

Are you sure you're responding to the right comment? I didn't say anything like that.

Linking a donation to an account would be optional in any sane implementation.

How much data is sent to the developer after somebody makes an in-app purchase?

They already have your phone number, closely tied to your real identity. What could they possibly do with some payment information?

This is a great idea.

One of my friends who just jumped ship to Signal this week said in his first Signal message to me that he wished he’d “bought some shares” in Signal when I first told him about it...

The first challenge is getting people to join the platform.

The second challenge is educating them on how it’s actually funded... (ie NOT by pimping out your personal data for shareholder benefit).

Stock with ticker SIGL surged 6000% on Jan 11 - investors thought it's the Signal Messenger. Same like the wrong Zoom company.

"Its market value surged from about $US55 million to over $US6 billion [...]" Pretty bonkers: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-16/signal-telegram-faceb...

Really undercuts the argument for the efficient market, at least in the short term!

I feel the entire history of capitalism undercuts that argument!

What's even more wild is that the executives/directors didn't sell any of their stock on the massive increase.

Quite likely they aren't allowed to sell whenever they want, they may be subject to an open trading window, or a fixed sell-down plan over the year.

Like a star? On the belly?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdLPe7XjdKc

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