They may be sponsored by the US Government, or by cryptographers with ties to the government.
https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-crypto-keepers-levine
It’s a long read, but it’s quite good. Here’s a snippet to whet your palate where he describes some of the prominent people behind these projects:
At least that’s how they saw themselves. My reporting revealed a different reality. As I found out by digging through financial records and FOIA requests, many of these self-styled online radicals were actually military contractors, drawing salaries with benefits from the very same U.S. national security state they claimed to be fighting. Their spunky crypto-tech also turned out, on closer inspection, to be a jury-rigged and porous Potemkin Village version of secure digital communications. What’s more, the relevant software here was itself financed by the U.S. government: millions of dollars a year flowing to crypto radicals from the Pentagon, the State Department, and organizations spun off from the CIA.
For context: I have become very interested in the debate amongst app users such as Telegram, Signal, Threema, etc… and I know that many people claim that Signal is the very best amongst all of them but there’s something really sketchy about its location (US based) and the fact that the government can for anyone to comply with their orders and forbid them from telling anyone about it via gag orders (see Durov’s comments on this: https://t.me/durov/59).
Both are fascinating reads, and certainly help me appreciate platforms like Telegram and Threema even more. Regarding Threema, today they posted a comparison between their app and the competition, and found this interesting tidbit regarding Signal:
https://threema.ch/en/blog/posts/messenger-comparison-2021
Signal enjoys an outstanding reputation among experts, and it’s certainly a good alternative to WhatsApp. However, just like WhatsApp, it requires users to disclose personally identifiable information: Providing a phone number is mandatory. As a US company, Signal is also subject to the CLOUD Act, which entitles US authorities to access data from IT service providers that are based in the US.
Also: I just learned that FB spends millions of dollars every year on marketing and trying to influence people to not use platforms such as telegram.
Yeah, I think it’s important to point out that I’m not saying that Signal is a bad app or that it doesn’t do what it claims it does. But when it comes to who’s funding these projects, it matters a lot. In contrast, look at telegram, whose main backer is a libertarian semi-anarchist billionaire. He’s been backing up the entire operation for a long time now although they will move into using ads and offering plus services to make it self-sustainable in the future. On that front, I trust Durov more than I would trust Signal coders and people affiliated to the project who, in turn, have ties to the feds in the USA. So all in all, at least in my case, I will be sticking to Threema and Telegram for the foreseeable future.
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Yes, the same applies for example to Proton VPN/Mail. It makes me sometimes wonder, but Proton VPN being in Switzerland does help them quell some skepticism for sure.