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Zoom Acquires Keybase

keybase.io

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Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#651

Post by nsporillo »

zamalek wrote: post #554
mikorym wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is funny that Zoom was one of the companies that I flagged in my head as the worst (or rather, most dangerous) up-and-coming tech company and I considered Keybase one of the most promising up-and-coming tech companies. Keybase solves a (to me) nontrivial problem: How to bring private keys into social media. Just a silly example: You don't use the same private-public key exchange in Whatsapp as you would use for yo…

> Zoom was one of the companies that I flagged in my head as the worst [...] Keybase one of the most promising Hear hear. It really is an absurd world we live in, and I had a good chuckle about that - just before I deleted my Keybase account.

I too deleted my keybase account right after reading this article.

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#653

Post by SujiYan »

mikorym wrote: post #436
gonehome wrote: post #349

For years people have been begging Keybase to allow them to pay them for the service and Chris Coyne always refused. Now they've lost their independence and they're owned by a communication company that has [edit: the majority of] its dev team in China. I use Keybase to talk to my friend in China since it's one of the few services they don't block. This is a pretty disappointing outcome.

It is funny that Zoom was one of the companies that I flagged in my head as the worst (or rather, most dangerous) up-and-coming tech company and I considered Keybase one of the most promising up-and-coming tech companies. Keybase solves a (to me) nontrivial problem: How to bring private keys into social media. Just a silly example: You don't use the same private-public key exchange in Whatsapp as you would use for yo…

Have a try of Maskbook.com , ran by our team. I believed this actually solve this problem in a more elegant way.

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#654

Post by SujiYan »

uoaei wrote: post #474
gonehome wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Zoom is based in California’s Silicon Valley, but it owns three companies in China that develop its software. The Citizen Lab said the structure allowed the company to lower its development costs, but added “this arrangement may make Zoom responsive to pressure from Chinese authorities.”" https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/apr/24/uk-governmen... The implication is that China is hostile and leverages their powe…

[flagged]

That’s not true since 199x

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#655

Post by highlysyntropic »

underyx wrote: post #44

Keybase's side of the announcement: https://keybase.io/blog/keybase-joins-zoom > What the Keybase team will be doing > Initially, our single top priority is helping to make Zoom even more secure. There are no specific plans for the Keybase app yet. Ultimately Keybase's future is in Zoom's hands, and we'll see where that takes us. Of course, if anything changes about Keybase’s availability, our users will get plenty o…

When I first heard of this purchase I thought, this is PR for Zoom to recover from its recent sec fails.

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#656

Post by rhizome »

wpietri wrote: post #598
gonehome wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much power do the VCs typically have? Don't founders often have the ability to overrule and make their own decisions? Chris is already financially independent from the OKCupid sale, he could have open sourced the server code and/or reduced the overall burn to pivot to paid accounts. Though the weird Stellar wallet addition implied some vision/product issues anyway. Of course it's easy and probably unfair for me t…

The power depends on the board structure and the ownership. But even if a founder owns 51% of the company, and so in theory can do anything, they still have an obligation to do right by the minority shareholders. This is generally known as fiduciary duty, and is a complex area of law. Here's a short summary: https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/fiduciary-responsibi... In a case like this, a founder can't just give…

>they still have an obligation to do right by the minority shareholders

Fiduciary duty is extremely rare to be the subject of a suit against a, let's say, CEO. It's a complex area of law because it isn't actually a law, nor specified anywhere, and not a requirement for corporate existence. So, it's a set of court decisions that future cases are built upon, but in general a house of cards in that it could be invalidated by a) legislation; and b) adverse rulings at any level of a suit.

It's a myth that the only purpose of executives is to maximize profit for the shareholders. It's a canard. PBCs are a counterfactual here, full stop.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-benefit_corporation

[note the significant use of "goal" in describing traditional corporations]

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#657

Post by rhizome »

gonehome wrote: post #550
tabbott wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Losing their independence was from the beginning the most likely outcome of building something that's hard to monetize like Keybase on the VC funding model. FWIW, I doubt Keybase offering a paid plan would have raised revenue that's significant compared to their burn, so Chris was probably right to not spend resources figuring out a paid offering. For raising their next round, having $5K in revenue from a paid plan f…

How much power do the VCs typically have? Don't founders often have the ability to overrule and make their own decisions? Chris is already financially independent from the OKCupid sale, he could have open sourced the server code and/or reduced the overall burn to pivot to paid accounts. Though the weird Stellar wallet addition implied some vision/product issues anyway. Of course it's easy and probably unfair for me t…

>How much power do the VCs typically have?

I wanna say we don't know. Has there ever been an instance of any company getting their tranche(s) and saying FU to the VC, and there being any repercussions? It's a two- or three-level hypothetical, but I think it's worth exploring to give you a complete answer.

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#658

Post by kirillzubovsky »

Although I would consider myself to be a technical person in general sense, I was definitely a non-technical light user of Keybase. More specifically, I was not really concerned of how they did their encryption, as long as they did it well, and I had Keybase just in case I needed to encrypt, rather than than actually using it daily like some here.

Looking back on my usage of Keybase, I realize that encryption to me is a feature, not a tool or an app. I prefer my conversations encrypted, but I don't seek out an app that does it. I would like my files to not be tampered with, but I just kind of assume that's the default on Dropbox at el, even if it's not.

From this view point, it might be a good thing that Zoom acquired Keybase. I would have rather it be Slack or Google or Microsoft, but Zoom will have to do. If they don't murder the acquisition right away, there is a chance they turn Zoom and all their future tools into a more secure environment, in which case it's a win-win for all.

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#659

Post by redis_mlc »

gonehome wrote: post #580
tabbott wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How much power do the VCs typically have? I think it's less about the power relationship, exactly, and more about the way VC-funded companies are setup to be run. As part of raising a round, you prepare a business plan that involves aggressively spending the money over a couple years. You're committed both internally and to your board to execute that plan, and it's cognitively difficult to do something different as…

Thank you - I really appreciate the detailed answer. I think I have a better understanding of how the incentives to cooperate would be hard to overcome even if you technically have the power as a founder (and even if you’re already financially independent). The personal experience was also interesting - thanks!

Well, that was an interesting anecdote.

But usually VC-funded companies have a board majority of said VC's, so they can overrule the founders anytime they want to.

Most commonly that's used to fire the founders and appoint a pet CEO (sorry, professional manager) who happened to go to school with one of the VC's.

So taking a story to them about "giving away our source code" would end up with the same result in most cases.

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#660

Post by anikdas »

zamalek wrote: post #632
nebulous1 wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a reference for this? Were they confirmed to be sending the info to the server? I would note that it wouldn't be uncommon for a program like zoom to have the relevant api calls in it to allow the user share a specific app with the conference call.

Yes. https://www.howtogeek.com/664624/does-zoom-really-monitor-wh...

This article does not say if Zoom tracks the other running application in your PC. It just detects whether the Zoom application is in focus.
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