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Signal’s president reveals the cost of running the privacy-preserving platform—not just to drum up donations, but to call out the for-profit surveillance business models it competes against.

The encrypted messaging and calling app Signal has become a one-of-a-kind phenomenon in the tech world: It has grown from the preferred encrypted messenger for the paranoid privacy elite into a legitimately mainstream service with hundreds of millions of installs worldwide. And it has done this entirely as a nonprofit effort, with no venture capital or monetization model, all while holding its own against the best-funded Silicon Valley competitors in the world, like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Gmail, and iMessage.

Today, Signal is revealing something about what it takes to pull that off—and it’s not cheap. For the first time, the Signal Foundation that runs the app has published a full breakdown of Signal’s operating costs: around $40 million this year, projected to hit $50 million by 2025.

Signal’s president, Meredith Whittaker, says her decision to publish the detailed cost numbers in a blog post for the first time—going well beyond the IRS disclosures legally required of nonprofits—was more than just as a frank appeal for year-end donations. By revealing the price of operating a modern communications service, she says, she wanted to call attention to how competitors pay these same expenses: either by profiting directly from monetizing users’ data or, she argues, by locking users into networks that very often operate with that same corporate surveillance business model.

“By being honest about these costs ourselves, we believe that helps provide a view of the engine of the tech industry, the surveillance business model, that is not always apparent to people,” Whittaker tells WIRED. Running a service like Signal—or WhatsApp or Gmail or Telegram—is, she says, “surprisingly expensive. You may not know that, and there’s a good reason you don’t know that, and it’s because it’s not something that companies who pay those expenses via surveillance want you to know.”

Signal pays $14 million a year in infrastructure costs, for instance, including the price of servers, bandwidth, and storage. It uses about 20 petabytes per year of bandwidth, or 20 million gigabytes, to enable voice and video calling alone, which comes to $1.7 million a year. The biggest chunk of those infrastructure costs, fully $6 million annually, goes to telecom firms to pay for the SMS text messages Signal uses to send registration codes to verify new Signal accounts’ phone numbers. That cost has gone up, Signal says, as telecom firms charge more for those text messages in an effort to offset the shrinking use of SMS in favor of cheaper services like Signal and WhatsApp worldwide.

Another $19 million a year or so out of Signal’s budget pays for its staff. Signal now employs about 50 people, a far larger team than a few years ago. In 2016, Signal had just three full-time employees working in a single room in a coworking space in San Francisco. “People didn’t take vacations,” Whittaker says. “People didn’t get on planes because they didn’t want to be offline if there was an outage or something.” While that skeleton-crew era is over—Whittaker says it wasn’t sustainable for those few overworked staffers—she argues that a team of 50 people is still a tiny number compared to services with similar-sized user bases, which often have thousands of employees.

read more: https://www.wired.com/story/signal-operating-costs/

archive link: https://archive.ph/O5rzD

Spotify has removed offensive imagery associated with a controversial song by Christian rapper Tyson James and his 11-year-old son Toby James, following a complaint by GLAAD.

However, the song “Still 2 Genders,” criticized for its transphobic lyrics, continues to be available on the platform. Meanwhile, no changes have been made to Apple Music’s platform.

Earlier this month, The Advocatereported that the song was accessible on major music streaming platforms, including Spotify and Apple Music, despite its derogatory lyrics towards transgender individuals, including a slur to describe them. The situation caught the attention of GLAAD, which then took up the issue with Spotify’s trust and safety team.

In an updated statement provided to The Advocate, a spokesperson from GLAAD emphasized the importance of enforcing hate speech policies by companies.

“Companies have hate speech policies to protect all users from toxic content and especially from content that incites violence against marginalized people. When these policies are violated, it is important to see companies enforce them,” the statement read.

GLAAD’s statement highlighted the grave real-world implications of hateful rhetoric and imagery connecting it to a tragic incident.

“The terrible murder of Lauri Carlton, an ally who had hung a Pride flag outside her store, is connected to a suspect who had an image of a burning Pride flag pinned to his Twitter profile,” the statement added.

The spokesperson further noted, “Rhetoric, images, and targeting of LGBTQ people encourages real-world harms. Companies and brands must continue to recognize their responsibility to people’s safety and public safety and immediately act to avoid facilitating anti-LGBTQ hate and violence.”

Spotify responded by removing the album cover and video imagery that included a burning Progress Pride flag GLAAD noted to The Advocate. Despite these steps, the song itself, carrying an anti-trans slur and dehumanizing transgender people as “demons,” remains live on Spotify’s platform.

Both Spotify and Apple Music have policies in place to moderate content on their platforms. Apple Music for Artists’ terms of service stipulates that all lyrics provided to the platform must be “correct, accurate, and do not contain hate speech.” On the other hand, Spotify’s Dangerous Content policy bars “content that incites violence or hatred towards a person or group of people based on race, religion, gender identity or expression.”

Despite these policies, Apple Music has yet to make any changes or respond to inquiries regarding the song’s availability on its platform.

In a prior response, GLAAD had stressed the digital sphere’s struggle with hate speech moderation, especially concerning anti-LGBTQ+ content, which extends beyond the realm of music streaming platforms. Their concern was not only about the derogatory lyrics but also the inconsistency in enforcing content policies by these platforms, which undermines the safety and inclusivity of all users.

As the scrutiny continues, both Spotify and Apple Music remain unresponsive to multiple inquiries from The Advocate regarding this issue. This scenario underscores a broader discussion concerning digital content moderation on streaming platforms, especially around anti-LGBTQ+ content.

link: https://www.advocate.com/news/spotify-transphobic-song-glaad

archive link: https://archive.ph/tz9FX

The Kids Online Safety Act has gained support from right-wing groups that want to crack down on LGBTQ content, and now Senator Elizabeth Warren.

Evan Greer is a transgender activist, musician and writer based in Boston. She’s the director of the digital rights non-profit Fight For The Future.

Senator Marsha Blackburn was recently caught on camera saying the goal of her bill, the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), is to "protect minor children from the transgender in this culture." That’s not that surprising. Senator Blackburn is one of the most anti-LGBTQ members of the Senate, and has said many terrible and offensive things about transgender people. What is surprising, is that Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, long seen as an LGBTQ ally, apparently wants to help Blackburn advance her legislative attack on our community.

This week, Senator Warren became a co-sponsor of KOSA, a dangerous and misguided bill that will make kids less safe, not more safe. KOSA is supported by right-wing groups that have campaigned against LGBTQ rights for decades, like NCOSE and Heritage Foundation, explicitly because it will allow conservative State Attorneys General to crack down on LGBTQ content under the guise of “protecting kids.” The bill seeks to address legitimate harm, but is written in such a way that it allows trans and LGBTQ youth to be exploited for cheap political points.

Senator Warren is absolutely right that Big Tech companies are out of control and need to be regulated. We’ve cheered her support for antitrust and privacy legislation. But KOSA will make the harms of Big Tech worse, not better.

The bill has been roundly condemned by a broad coalition of civil society, LGBTQ rights, human rights, and racial justice organizations as well as parents of transgender children. Advocates have driven more than 300,000 emails and calls to lawmakers against KOSA, including many from young people who have been sounding the alarm about the bill on TikTok and other social media platforms.

Lawmakers are also expressing concerns. Rep Maxwell Frost (D-FL), the youngest member of the House, has come out against KOSA, along with Senator Wyden of Oregon.

Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey, a longtime champion of more privacy and safety protections for kids online, has also expressed concerns about KOSA. In the Senate Commerce Committee markup of the bill he said, "I commend the authors for their work on the bill, but I want to continue to work to modify the bill to fix the concerns that the LGBTQ community has been raising. More work needs to be done."

Despite all of this, and over the objections of dozens of human rights groups like the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition and the ACLU, Senator Warren has decided to sign on as a cosponsor of KOSA. Worse, she has done so without securing a single change to the bill. Human rights and civil liberties groups are trying to hold the line to demand meaningful changes to protect LGBTQ and other marginalized groups that are being attacked in states, Senator Warren is breaking that line to help pass a deeply flawed bill.

I’d like to think that this misstep was unintentional, especially given Senator Warren’s long record of purported support for the LGBTQ community. At a time when my community faces unprecedented danger, I genuinely hope that the Senator does not care more about scoring political points by posturing as tough on Big Tech than she does about the actual substance of the legislation and whether it will help or hurt marginalized communities.

As a former law professor, Senator Warren should also know better than to cosponsor a bill that constitutional experts have said is blatantly unconstitutional as written. A court just found that California’s Age Appropriate Design Code, which KOSA borrows a lot from, likely violates the First Amendment, because it allows the government to dictate what content platforms can show to which users. The provisions that will almost certainly run afoul of the First Amendment are the very same provisions that will do damage to my community and that we’ve asked lawmakers to change.

KOSA might be redeemable. There are good faith supporters of the bill who want to take on big tech and stop exploitative practices that harm children and adults in the name of greed. But they’ve made a bad bargain and are refusing to make common sense changes that will not only protect marginalized communities but would also make the bill less likely to be struck down in court. Unfortunately, these supporters are trading the rights of marginalized people for expediency in passing a dangerous bill. They’ve made changes to KOSA, but none of them address the bill’s deadly flaws: it requires censorship and incentivizes invasive age verification.

I’d hoped Senator Warren wouldn’t make this kind of trade. It’s a deal that will have deadly consequences for the most vulnerable people in our society, especially transgender youth, who already face disproportionate rates of violence, discrimination, self-harm, and who are actively being targeted by extreme right wing legislatures and attorneys general. The very same attorneys general that KOSA will empower to censor online speech.

Senator Warren is an influential member of Congress. She’s a member of Democratic leadership and a former presidential candidate. And she’s shown thoughtfulness on these issues in the past. She rightly expressed regret over her support for SESTA/FOSTA, and introduced an important bill to study the harm it did to sex workers and LGBTQ rights.

I hope that Senator Warren will read the letter signed by hundreds of parents of trans and gender expansive kids, many of whom are from Massachusetts, and use her power to pressure changes in KOSA that will actually protect marginalized communities. As it stands, her cosponsorship advances policies that Sen. Blackburn and far-right hate groups hope will be used against my community.

link: https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjven5/elizabeth-warren-just-backed-an-online-safety-bill-that-will-harm-lgbtq-youth

Incarcerated people work for cents on the dollar or for free to make goods you use.

Brittany White, 37, was arrested for marijuana trafficking in Alabama in 2009. She went to trial to contest the charges — after all, just a year prior the United States president had admitted, cheekily, that inhaling was “the point.”

She was sentenced to 20 years. But her sentence was meted out in portions, based on good behavior, and she, posing no discernable public safety risk for selling a plant increasingly legal in states all across the U.S., was allowed to work on the outside.

She got a job at a Burger King.

But the state of Alabama took a significant portion of her paltry minimum wage. “They charged me $25 a week for transportation,” she tells Truthdig. “And they take away 40% of your check. It’s egregious to be making minimum wage, and then to have so much taken away by the state.”

Minimum wage in Alabama is $7.25.

Still, White considers herself lucky. Even her paltry earnings were better than nothing. She was able to purchase soap from the commissary. The prison-provided soap is full of lye, she says, which you definitely do not want near your private parts.

Many stuck behind bars are forced to work for cents per hour, or for nothing. While corporate culprits are commonly blamed for exploiting the labor of incarcerated people, it’s actually primarily states and the federal government who take advantage, and make the public unwittingly complicit.

Got a car? Your license plate was likely made by inmates. In New York, inmates make the trash cans. High school desks are often made on the inside; so are glasses for Medicare patients.

Many stuck behind bars are forced to work for cents per hour, or for nothing, for corporations, states and the federal government.

Companies like CorCraft in New York manage labor in the state’s prisons. They’re funded by the state’s budget, and boast they’re New York state’s preferred choice for “office chairs, desks, panel systems, classroom furniture, cleaning, vehicle, and personal care supplies, and more.”

“Summer Sizzles with Classroom Furniture from Corcraft,” their website declares.

They also claim to help in “the department’s overall mission to prepare incarcerated individuals for release through skill development, work ethic, respect and responsibility.”

The people behind the “sizzling” furniture beg to differ.

In the 12 years he was incarcerated in New York state, Dyjuan Tatro was forced to work a variety of jobs, from making desks to license plates. “At the end, I didn’t have a resume,” he tells Truthdig. “I didn’t get one thing to help me be successful on the outside from the prison. No resume, no job experience… Just $40 and a bus ticket — from 12 years of prison labor, I couldn’t use any of it to get a meaningfully paying job.”

Bianca Tylek, the executive director of Worth Rises, an organization devoted to eradicating unjust prison practices, goes further. “It’s slavery,” she tells Truthdig.

The 13th Amendment, which ended slavery, left an important exception: it’s still legal to garnish wages, or more commonly, refuse to pay incarcerated people for forced labor. “As a result, incarcerated people live in slavery-like conditions,” Tylek adds.

Of course, there are nuances. For example, trading community service, like, say, picking up trash, in exchange for not serving time, is one example of a noncarceral approach. But incarceration changes the equation. Tylek notes that it’s not just about the miniscule (or nonexistent) wages. It’s compelling people to work, with the alternative being a stint in solitary and other punishments, like refusing to let them see relatives, consequences that are meted out by guards. She also notes that they have to work in dangerous trades they may not be trained for, including industrial-sized laundries or ovens.

Despite what someone did or did not do, to end up behind bars, coercing them into performing free labor is wrong, Tylek notes. “I like to ask people the question, ‘Under what circumstances is slavery OK?” she tells Truthdig.

“If you can’t answer that question, the answer is, slavery is never OK.”