Signal President Meredith Whittaker says the company plans to support encrypted backups in 2025, and it costs ~$50M per year to run the encrypted messaging app
www.wired.com/story/big-in... Gloria / @gloriarheagrante : 🛰📶 “Signal knows who we are. Signal will continue being Signal. Signal has one thing we do, and we do it really well. And we do it pretty obsessively, that is, provide truly private communications infrastructure to everyone, everywhere, globally. Full stop. … Dell Cameron / @dell : “We don't want to be the outlier that proves the rule, we want to be a new set of rules leading the way to a much more open and diverse tech ecosystem that isn't reliant on like five companies and 15 guys and a paradigm that is very, very stale.” Mastodon: Kathy Reid / @KathyReid@aus.social : Great interview of @Mer__edith by @lhn for @WIRED — > Signal “is something it is clear there is a market for and people want, and yet we have to squeeze ourselves into a nonprofit shape that is not quite conducive for the high availability real-time tech we are maintaining and developing …
Context & Ripple Effects
Signal has been pairing privacy-focused product expansion with a nonprofit operating model: earlier coverage described mainstream-oriented feature additions, while a 2023 disclosure put operating costs near the level now cited in Signal's published cost forecast.
Whittaker's recent commentary has also centered on encryption amid government pressure and Signal's EU focus in its 10th-anniversary discussion. The backup commitment makes that privacy position a more concrete product roadmap issue.
First-order effects
- Signal has made encrypted backups a stated 2025 product commitment, potentially addressing a major recovery and device-transition need without abandoning its encrypted-messaging premise.
- The roughly $50 million annual operating figure foregrounds the continuing funding burden of running Signal's global service, rather than treating privacy infrastructure as costless software.
Second-order effects
- Encrypted backups would extend Signal's privacy proposition beyond live messages, raising the usability bar for messaging services that position themselves around secure communications.
- The roadmap sharpens the practical stakes of the encryption debate previously framed around government pressure to weaken encryption: product features that preserve privacy make such trade-offs more visible to users and policymakers.
Third-order effects
- If private backup becomes a standard expectation, encrypted messaging providers will increasingly compete on whether they can combine data recovery with strong privacy guarantees.
- Signal's disclosed operating burden underscores a broader sustainability question for privacy-first services: maintaining independent, global infrastructure requires durable funding as feature expectations expand.
The trend: Privacy-focused messaging is moving from encrypted transport alone toward full-service usability, while the cost of independently operating that infrastructure becomes more central.