Signal Jabs at Facebook and Navigates Growing Pains as Popularity Surges

Moxie Marlinspike, a legendary coder and privacy advocate, takes on Big Tech and internal dissent

By Ryan Gallagher

The encrypted messaging company Signal has long been popular with activists, investigative journalists, politicians and assorted law enforcement officials because of its emphasis on privacy and security. Its growth was steady — but slow.

Then came Christmas break. Employees returned from the holidays to an unexpected surge in new users that overwhelmed Signal’s servers and sent engineers racing to increase capacity.

Suddenly a niche app endorsed by National Security Agency whistle-blower Edward Snowden was swarmed by new users — more than 50 million people downloaded it within 10 days, doubling Signal’s total user base and making it the top downloaded app in 70 countries, according to several current and former employees. The meteoric growth put huge pressure on Signal’s 30 or so employees, mostly engineers, product designers and developers who work remotely from their homes in the U.S. and Canada.

The deluge also exposed tensions about the direction and management of Signal under its unconventional founder and chief executive officer, Moxie Marlinspike, a dreadlocked cryptographer whose varied interests have included punk rock, sailing and anarchism. A handful of employees have quit in the last year, leaving some…

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