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Moxie Marlinspike wants to bring someone "with fresh energy" to Signal
Photo: Steve Jennings
WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton takes over the leadership of the competing chat service Signal - at least until a permanent new boss is found. Signal founder Moxie Marlinspike announced in a blog post on Monday that he would be vacating the CEO post within a month. After more than a decade at the helm of Signal, he wanted to bring someone "with fresh energy" into the not-for-profit company and would concentrate on the search for a successor. However, he remains a member of the Board of Directors.
Signal has an estimated 40 million monthly active users.
The app relies on end-to-end encryption, in which chat content is only available in clear text for the users involved.
Last year, Signal benefited from the controversy surrounding the new WhatsApp Terms of Service and the ensuing influx of new users.
The encryption algorithm developed by Signal is also used by WhatsApp.
Acton, in turn, has been involved with Signal since he left the Facebook group in 2017 - a few years after the WhatsApp takeover - and distanced himself from the online network.
In 2018 he put $ 50 million into the nonprofit Signal Foundation.
Signal recently switched to a controversial project: to offer users the option of sending a digital currency called MobileCoin in such a way that no one except the sender and recipient can see or track it.
According to US media reports, some Signal employees feared that this could cause major problems for the chat service, including with US regulators.
Marlinspike was a paid advisor to MobileCoin and was involved in its development.
A few days ago he also published a blog post with his first assessments of the development of the so-called Web3 and came to the conclusion that the technology - contrary to what is often claimed - by no means contributes to more decentralization on the Internet, but rather has central bottlenecks.
pbe / dpa