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Over the past month, messaging app Signal has been downloaded tens of millions of times. But unlike most social platforms, the company hardly knows anything about its users.

Signal which is owned by a nonprofit and doesn't sell ads or user data avoids collecting people's demographic or personal information other than phone numbers, which are required to create accounts. All groups and direct messages on the platform are encrypted, meaning the company doesn't know how its app is being used, and doesn't want to find out.

Now, Signal is at the center of a new battle over online privacy and content moderation.

The company is under pressure to claim responsibility for how its platform is used amid concerns that extremists are flocking to it after being exiled from Parler and closed Facebook groups. Signal employees have internally raised concerns that the app isn't doing enough to stave off abuse, The Verge reported Monday.

Those concerns build on longstanding pressure from the US and other governments to break encryption in order to aid law enforcement investigations, a measure Signal has previously rejected. Meanwhile, so long as Signal's primary form of distribution is through Apple and Google's app stores, it's beholden to their rules around moderating harmful content something that could prove precarious as it continues to grow and add new features.

Privacy experts told Insider that Signal's practice of not collecting user data puts it in uncharted territory as it adapts to surging growth. While experts agree that breaking encryption is antithetical to the app's purpose, they said that Signal may have to write an entirely new playbook to ensure the app isn't used for nefarious purposes without compromising privacy.

"Now is the time to start thinking about these concerns," said Megan Squire, an Elon University professor and Southern Poverty Law Center senior fellow tracking online extremism. "I think it's probably past time."

A Signal spokesperson did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment. In an interview last August, Signal CEO Moxie Marlinspike told Insider that the importance of protecting privacy should outweigh concerns that private channels are used for illegal activity.

"It's important to realize that real change happens in private. That has to be true. And if you don't have any truly private spaces left, I think you're sacrificing a lot," Marlinspike said.

The company was founded with a privacy-first mentality meant to run counter to the data-collection practices of big tech companies like Facebook and Google. Marlinspike has highlighted its commitment to protecting the secrecy of people's conversations on the platform.

"There's this insanity to how everything works right now. Just a handful of companies have a massive amount of data about everybody it's a dangerous equation," Marlinspike said in the August interview.

Signal has become a target among groups targeting online extremism in recent weeks. After reports surfaced that the Jan. 6 siege of the Capitol was organized by users on Facebook and Twitter, those companies began cracking down and banning accounts linked to the violence. Parler, a social media platform used by some riot participants, was taken offline by Amazon for failing to moderate content on its site.

The same week, tens of millions of new users flocked to Signal, as well as other encrypted messaging apps like Telegram. That surge was likely also driven by an exodus of users from WhatsApp over its new data-sharing policies, but its proximity to the online crackdowns following the Capitol siege made Signal an area of interest to extremism researchers, according to Squire.

While Signal has traditionally offered direct messages and small group messages using its encryption protocol, its newer group links feature rolled out in October is garnering more concern. The feature, which is available on rivals such as WhatsApp, makes it possible to share a public link through which anyone can join an encrypted group of up to 1,000 people.

That function raises red flags to those fighting online extremism according to Squire, extremists typically use encrypted chats to plan specific events while evading scrutiny while using larger groups to spread "propaganda."

"What you end up with is these large, encrypted groups full of people that don't really know each other and aren't accountable and could be getting radicalized and doing weird stuff," Squire said. "As Signal starts to add more features, that makes it look like a one-stop shop."

It moves Signal closer to a threshold that, when crossed, could expose it to demands to moderate its content. Right now, Signal doesn't advertise these groups within the app, but competitor Telegram does let users search for hashtags and terms to surface publicly visible forums.

For example, just this week, Insider searched Telegram for the #stopthesteal hashtag and found an open group with more than 800 members.

Telegram says it's taken steps to increase moderation on its platforms, but the way in which it amplifies these groups has drawn criticism in recent weeks, with the app coming under fire for hosting groups that have been linked to violence.

In response, nonprofit Coalition for a Safer Web sued Apple for not taking down Telegram following the Capitol attack.

Coalition president Marc Ginsberg acknowledged to Insider that encryption on apps like Signal and Telegram has been a force for good, such as helping users in autocratic regimes shield their communications, but argues that Telegram makes it far too easy for users to find groups posting hateful content.

"Our fight is not to take on encryption," he said. "Our efforts are right now focused on content moderation."

Even privacy advocates note that large groups carry different expectations of privacy than direct messages. John Callas, project director at the privacy-focused Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Insider he does find pressure to decrypt group chats "concerning" but added that as groups surpass hundreds of members, encryption becomes increasingly moot because there's less of an expectation of privacy.

"I believe there's a basic human right for two people to be able to talk in private," Callas said. "But when you have a group that big, encryption is not the issue."

As it continues to build out new features that could be ripe for abuse, Signal's more immediate threat may be Apple and Google, which have rules for any app on their store that produces user-generated content which is to say, content created by people for other people to view (Google defines it as content "visible to or accessible by at least a subset of the app's users.")

Apple and Google demand that apps producing this content have sufficient moderation policies to stamp out harmful content such as hate speech, and language inciting violence. That rule was recently enforced when Google and Apple suspended social media app Parler from their app stores following the Capitol Hill riots. The app, which is popular with far-right Trump supporters, was hosting content inciting violence and did not have sufficient moderation policies to ban that content, Google and Apple said.

Governments have been pressuring tech companies to break encryption for more than a decade. Department of Justice officials during the Obama and Trump administrations urged companies including Signal, Apple, and Facebook to build "encryption backdoors" that would let them decrypt suspects' messages in order to solve crimes.

Privacy experts fiercely oppose that measure, saying it would compromise everyone's privacy by weakening encryption. Evan Greer, deputy director of digital privacy advocacy group Fight for the Future, told Insider that she's skeptical of renewed calls to break encryption to counter far-right extremism online.

"Encryption is essential for millions of peoples' safety," Greer said, noting that activists and political dissidents worldwide rely on encryption to avoid persecution. "We have a lot of work to do to address harmful, hateful ideologies, but we have to stop looking for these quick fixes of, 'Let's blame the technology.'"

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Signal is at the center of a new battle over content moderation - Business Insider