US government funding and markings are all over Signal.
The official app doesn’t make it clear how to connect to a custom server. As a self hosting enthusiast myself, I only found out it was possible when checking on your claim that it’s all open source.
You’re right, the server, cryptographic library, and all clients are open source.
That said, I have a few personal caveats.
I was talking entirely about Deepseek.
I never would have bothered to check because someone already pointed out Signal is US based but that is very interesting.
so thank you.
have you just heard that it is possible (it is, technically), or did you also try it in practice? did you check the hardware requirements?