Companies accessing your data can surprise in ways you don’t expect: Signal’s Acton

Unlike other messaging apps, Signal depends on grants and donations for running its operations.

WhatsApp's latest privacy policy has once again stirred up the debate on consumer privacy. In an interview with CNBC-TV18, Brian Acton, executive chairman of Signal Foundation, said that data protection and privacy were at the core of Signal’s philosophy.

“When you have these relationships with companies where they may have access to your data, they can surprise you in ways that you really don't expect,” he told Megha Vishwanath.

“Sometimes you are happy and you are delighted and sometimes it just feels downright creepy. Personally, I don't think that that's how I would like to operate my business. I would like to operate with more straightforward candour and transparency,” he said.

Following is the edited transcript of the full interview with Brian Acton:

A: Certainly after that tweet we saw a considerable upswing in terms of downloads and interest in Signal.

We are extraordinarily grateful to Elon Musk, Anand Mahindra. There have been some great names that have been tweeting about us and using our product.

A: It is important for people that they are presented with alternatives. What Signal does is, present a privacy-first and privacy-centric alternative to other messengers that are out there.

A: The thing that people don't know or understand is that WhatsApp was quite self-sufficient and independent on its own and that is because we had a simple fee model that was 99 cents per year. That generated enough revenue and it was substantial enough that we could own and operate the service quite well and grow it quite considerably before Facebook came along and bought it.

Again it goes back to alternatives. Of course, Facebook has a specific agenda in how they want WhatsApp to evolve and monetize and generate revenue for Facebook. They make the decisions that they make based on their excellence around advertising, their excellence around building business relationships. That wasn't really what I was interested in.

I was interested in making communications safe, secure, reliable, easy and convenient.

A: Absolutely. Believe it or not, if you are smart, you are engineering, you are efficient and control your costs, it actually doesn't cost as much as people think. The 99 cent plan that we had in place was enough to help us grow our business and cover our costs.

A: I think that what's quite interesting is this new privacy policy in terms of service, it's actually kind of complicated. And to really understand it, you have to sort of read it quite carefully, so that you can understand that Facebook's trying to thread a very specific needle around privacy and monetization. That's probably what I don't like the most, it's a very slippery slope and people often times can misstep and do it wrong.

In the Signal scenario, we don't have those problems. With Signal people just download the app, the privacy policy is very understandable and it's very straightforward. I mean, you don't have to worry, you don't have to think twice about 'how is my data being used?.'

A: I try to operate with the principle of least surprise. When, when you have these relationships with companies where they may have access to your data, they can surprise you in ways that you really don't expect.

Sometimes you are happy and you are delighted and sometimes it just feels downright creepy. Personally, I don't think that that's how I would like to operate my business. I would like to operate with more straightforward candour and transparency.

With Signal, there's no question as to how your data is being used. You own your data, we don't have access to it, and it's simple.

A: I think we continue to explore what we can do with Signal in terms of data privacy, information security. Ideally, I would love to expand beyond messaging in the long term.

Right now, what's important to us is to make sure that we have a rock-solid flagship product. Donations - I think are our primary vehicle. The more you build something that people use every day that they need every day, the more likely you are to get a donation.

If you look at a service like Wikipedia, where, as it stands today, Wikipedia generates a surplus of donations. You are in a much better position to survive and thrive into the long term when you can start to build a long-term endowment and a long-term savings of funds that protect you from economic cycles and allow your organization and your foundation to survive in perpetuity.

A: I think it's undecided. As we look into the future, we don't know how fast we will grow, and how well we can control our costs. But as it stands, today, we are committed to offering the service as freely as possible. I don't like to really talk about freemium models, because I want to focus right now on donations, grants, those types of things.

We have had some extraordinary, generous donors through the years already. We continue to earn their trust, and we continue to earn their dollars. And I think that's the right relationship to have with your donors.

A: That's a long process of continuous improvement. You take the product and you incorporate the feedback of the people that use it. We have been really delighted to see such a surge in India, because India represents a market that's uniquely diverse, and very rich. We get some fantastic suggestions of improvements, we also get fantastic feedback in terms of it works or it doesn't work in these cases. So we learn from it. This is what I did with WhatsApp and this is what I am doing with Signal.

A: It does mean that we have a harder time with getting quantitative analytical data. Sometimes we have to rely on our own intuition. We rely on the feedback of our users through our support channels and reviews. And then we also do research. Research in various markets, including the Indian market, we have done research in India specifically, that helps inform us and make sure that we are building a global product and a global first product.

A: Telegram is a different beast. It's a different type of organization.

A: We are certainly aware of Telegram, we are certainly aware of all the messengers out there. I think we all look over each other's shoulders and see what's good and bad about them. I am extraordinarily proud of the team that's building Signal and our privacy-first policy, it's unduplicated by any other messenger out there.

A: I think that Telegram has not been extremely clear in terms of what its monetization strategies are going to be. They experimented with Bitcoin-like cryptocurrency, but then they had to pull back on that idea. Recently, we have been hearing about other forays into potential advertising. So I think Telegram hasn't figured out their sustainability model.

Telegram is a business, very much like WhatsApp is a business or any other messenger product. So I think there's a little bit more uncertainty. Kudos to Telegram in what they have accomplished, and kudos to WhatsApp in what they have accomplished, it's competitive.

A: We look at India as a leader in the internet space, and we look at India to help guide us in terms of making our product better. So in terms of raising our engagement, potentially spending more time in India, and looking at long term, how we can leverage people in India, is something that we talk about all the time.

A: I think different people might have different opinions. It certainly does feel bold. For me, it was a very deliberate decision and a very straightforward decision. I came to the conclusion that I did not want to be at Facebook and WhatsApp anymore. And there was no amount of money that would necessarily make me stay. So it was time for me to go and I did, which I am glad that I did.

A: I think every entrepreneur has a small degree of fear of failure. We, over the last two years, have been pushing and working and pushing and working every day to make Signal better. This recognition is unprecedented for us. Even in my time at WhatsApp, WhatsApp never achieved levels like we are seeing in the last couple days, and it's exciting.

A: Absolutely. You can't become complacent especially in technology. There's a competition that's always nipping at you. Frankly, we still have a lot of work to do. We are working very hard to continue to make Signal the product that you want to use for your messaging and to protect your communications.

A: We can never have enough people in hiring in building an organization. I always think that we should have grown our organization faster. It's just extraordinarily hard to do. So maybe I might prioritize hiring even more. But it's hard to play, to look back and answer those types of questions because you never get to do things twice.

A: I think we continue to think about growing. Our growth rate certainly has been unprecedented. But long term, I would love to see Signal become a billion-user product. I would love to see 100-200 million Indian people using our product.

What's important is, that we have to earn that, you can't just have a ton of people download the app today, and then stop using it tomorrow. We have to earn your trust and we have to delight you in a product experience and that's what we are set out to do.

A: That was a statement that I made that was largely a reflection of my choice. It was a choice I made because of things that were happening at that time. I encourage people to be critical, thoughtful about the choices that they make and the services that they use. It's good to know who uses your data and how they use your data, it's good to be educated about the activities. So make those choices, make those informed and educated choices in every service that you use online.