Nitasha Tiku writes on The Washington Post:

The only way to escape technology that makes money off your data is by paying for products that don’t, Whittaker says. An alternative to data collection only exists if the community of people who rely on it “kick in a little bit,” she said.

Signal is one of the few successful tech products, like the Firefox browser, led by vociferous critics of Big Tech. The app offers end-to-end encryption on group text, voice and video chat, does not collect or store sensitive information and does not store backups of your data on its servers — a viable alternative to relentless data gathering at the center of tech industry critiques.

In the world of messaging (today), you have behemoths like WhatsApp and iMessage, and they are “backed by some of the richest companies in the world.” And then there’s Signal. It’s run by a nonprofit and pretty much operates as the exact opposite — they are committed to end-to-end encryption, does not collect or store sensitive information, or backups of user data.

This post from Nitasha Tiku on The Washington Post gives a detailed backstory on Meredith Whittaker, former Google manager, and her arrival to Signal as President (and board member since 2020), as well as why Signal “hopes to support itself with small donations from millions of users.”