this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2023
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[–] Poutinetown@lemmy.ca 46 points 11 months ago (3 children)

The cost of these registration services for verifying phone numbers when people first install Signal, or when they re-register on a new device, currently averages around $6 million dollars per year.

That's pretty crazy. Wonder which third party providers they are using. Maybe the identity verification methods we have today is due for some significant changes?

[–] verysoft@kbin.social 41 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Yeah, I wasn't expecting that to be the bulk of their spending. Maybe they should remove the need for phone numbers now they removed SMS.

[–] Poutinetown@lemmy.ca 15 points 11 months ago (1 children)

SMS is dead, so they will need to move on eventually. Most carriers are moving towards high data plans now. I mainly use it for verification, although I'd rather use more secure methods.

[–] u_tamtam@programming.dev 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Well, if SMS is dead then RCS is what we get instead, and there's no difference to us (and probably higher costs for Signal & al.)

And there are wayyyy too many things that depend on SMS for it to be dead any time soon, too :)

[–] smileyhead@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 11 months ago

Also Signal cannot add RCS support, because Google Jibe servers won't allow other app than Google Messages... And you must use them because native RCS support for Android is halted for years... And you cannot install some module with RCS support yourself because of anti-Unix monolitic Android userspace architecture...

Man, there are so many things done wrong.

[–] tja@sh.itjust.works 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] u_tamtam@programming.dev 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

No, I think they are merely working on user ids no longer mandating to be your phone number (so that it can be pseudonymous, e.g. tja@signal instead of +xx0123456@signal), I don't believe they hope to drop SMS verification at this point because of the spam issue getting worse otherwise

[–] tja@sh.itjust.works 2 points 11 months ago

Ah yes, good point! 👍

[–] u_tamtam@programming.dev 9 points 11 months ago

Without SMS verification, spam would be so much worse that they've been kind of obliged to keep it, even though it defeats/undoes most of the privacy features they like to advertise about

[–] Uranium3006@kbin.social 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

identity verification is trash anyways, we don't need it

[–] Poutinetown@lemmy.ca 12 points 11 months ago (4 children)

The article says it's to limit spam. I don't feel platforms like Lemmy (or the other platform) are particularly spammy though. On the other hand I get a lot more spam on Whatsapp, even though it's phone number bound.

Signal is pretty good in terms of limited spam, but I'm curious about the impact if they A/B test the removal and see how much spam would arise. Obviously that could only be implemented after they remove the need to add contact via phone number.

[–] yanyuan@lemmy.world 27 points 11 months ago

You are correct my friend, because Lemmy is for smart people like us. And a smart person like you could easily make 10k per month on the side.
With just a small initial investment you could create a huge passive income in no time.
Just go to shadyscamspam.com and become your own boss.

[–] huginn@feddit.it 13 points 11 months ago

Niche communities don't deal with spam.

But the moment it's big enough Lemmy will be rife with spammers and you'll need full time moderation tools.

[–] Linkerbaan@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago

If you go to Reddit which is more popular for bots certain subs are completely filled with spam and votebots. r/worldnews is like a giant circle of pro IDF bots jerking eachother off. LSF became a shitshow too.

[–] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 11 months ago

plenty of instances have email verification and or captcha, and those that don't get defederated (sometimes) (this already happened)