Signal
The GTI Label — this product's ethical and social footprint.
Weighted under the Balanced profile. 2 declared components across 2 layers.
The product itself
How this product scores on its own merits — its licence, ownership and openness — separate from the stack it's built on.
Flags
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Amazon Web Services concentration
Hyperscaler chokepoint — a handful of providers host much of the web.
By layer
Amazon Web Services
No third-party trackers
By axis
The score is the vector — each axis is scored on its own, then weighted into the number above. Open an axis to see the reasoning behind it.
Data sovereignty & surveillance
medium
58.3
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Where data lives and the surveillance capacity it grants. 5 = fully sovereign.
End-to-end encrypted; minimal metadata retained.
Environmental footprint
high
62.5
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Energy source, hardware lifecycle, water/cooling. Follows provenance.
Local economic benefit
high
37.5
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Does the spend stay in-region (5) or leave (1)?
Market concentration
high
50.0
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Does using this reinforce a chokepoint or monopoly? 5 = no lock-in / many alternatives.
Openness & lock-in
medium
66.7
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Can you leave, and can others reach it? 5 = open access with no account required and easy data export; 1 = a walled garden — account-gated, proprietary, hard to export.
Open protocol and clients; sign-up tied to a phone number.
Ownership model
medium
66.7
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Who benefits from ownership? Shareholder / private-equity extraction (1) vs worker-owned / nonprofit / state or public-good (5).
Signal Foundation — a nonprofit with no shareholders.
Software freedom (FOSS)
medium
66.7
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Is the software free & open-source, and under what licence? 5 = fully FOSS under an OSI-approved licence; 1 = proprietary / closed source.
Clients and server are fully open-source.
Core managed services are proprietary and closed-source.
No proprietary third-party trackers; self-hosted OSS analytics.
Upstream labour
high
62.5
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Chip fabrication, warehouse, data-labelling conditions. Follows provenance.
Similar labels
Other products in the same space, best score first.
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