I always assumed Signal favored AWS because AWS is valuable to a lot of foreign entities that might just as well block all signal.org and any IP network advertised by its ASN.
The advantage of bundling your service in a hyper scaler is in persuading censors that they’d rather tolerate Signal than lose AWS. This doesn’t work in China which has sophisticated alternatives, but it can help Signal hold on in other countries.
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I always assumed Signal favored AWS because AWS is valuable to a lot of foreign entities that might just as well block all signal.org and any IP network advertised by its ASN.
The advantage of bundling your service in a hyper scaler is in persuading censors that they’d rather tolerate Signal than lose AWS. This doesn’t work in China which has sophisticated alternatives, but it can help Signal hold on in other countries.
In reality it's probably the same reason as why they used Chromium Electron for their desktop app - it was easy.