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Zoom to bring end-to-end encryption to all users, including non-paying

blog.zoom.us

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Re: Zoom to bring end-to-end encryption to all users, including non-paying

#401

I find this story arch with Zoom amusing: 1. Pre-COVID Zoom claims it has E2E encryption for everyone. 2. During COVID Zoom grows in popularity, which prompts journalists to learn that the claims that Zoom has E2E encryption are inaccurate. 3. Zoom admits that it never had true E2E encryption, but announces they will develop it and it will only be available for paying customers. 4. Zoom gets another wave of criticism…

You missed the part where they acquired Keybase to help them build e2e encryption. https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/07/zoom-acquires-keybase-to-g...

Re: Zoom to bring end-to-end encryption to all users, including non-paying

#402
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes your comments even better is that Zoom's response from the get-go has basically been "Look at all these large companies that are using our service. Would they be using our service if we weren't secure?" Meanwhile the companies in question universally refuse to acknowledge THEY NEVER ACTUALLY VERIFIED ANY of the claims around encryption. It would be hilarious if it weren't so terrifying. And oh, by the way,…

I've been in the interview loop as of late, and there's been a crazy shift away from Zoom. Almost every video chat I had was using Zoom a couple months back, now everyone is using Google Chat or MS Team Meetings. Now these are small to medium-ish size companies (20-500 people), so maybe it's not a big deal to Zoom's marketing bottom line. But it's definitely a thing.

Is any one choosing Teams for Teams alone and not because of already having a relation with Microsoft? That’s Microsoft’s playbook.

People are doing 50-200 person video meetings with Google? Has Meet really improved that much since March/April? That’s not that long ago. Otherwise it seems more like cost is the reason. Not anything relating to quality.

Re: Zoom to bring end-to-end encryption to all users, including non-paying

#403
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes your comments even better is that Zoom's response from the get-go has basically been "Look at all these large companies that are using our service. Would they be using our service if we weren't secure?" Meanwhile the companies in question universally refuse to acknowledge THEY NEVER ACTUALLY VERIFIED ANY of the claims around encryption. It would be hilarious if it weren't so terrifying. And oh, by the way,…

Feels like Theranos except the only difference is that Zoom has working software

I don’t understand. That means it’s fine. Theranos big issue was not having anything. Otherwise they lied a ton. Not unlike many, many companies.

Re: Zoom to bring end-to-end encryption to all users, including non-paying

#405
post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a business model perspective, if Zoom embraced open-source, what would be their moat/value-add, compared to users downloading/forking from GitHub? Not being snarky: I'm genuinely curious what the "good citizen" (but still profitable) OS/FOSS model would look like, whether at equivalent revenue or reduced revenue.

It is not like no one ever came up with video chatting before and they are the only ones around so the moat is moot. The only reasons they exist in any meaningful way starts the "just works" thing and ends with the "vhs v.s betamax" thing. For the business model, it is the same as other OS, there are companies that want a tech insurance policy.

No other company right now can get the reliability and “just works” like Zoom. If they open source everything, why wouldn’t all the competitors including the biggest companies in the world not start seeing how Zoom is doing things. We already see open source “borrowed” frequently. Amazon’s AWS being a regular.

Re: Zoom to bring end-to-end encryption to all users, including non-paying

#406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a business model perspective, if Zoom embraced open-source, what would be their moat/value-add, compared to users downloading/forking from GitHub? Not being snarky: I'm genuinely curious what the "good citizen" (but still profitable) OS/FOSS model would look like, whether at equivalent revenue or reduced revenue.

Seems to work fine for 8x8, who maintain Jitsi.

Jitsi is a fraction of what they do and something they didn’t even own that long ago. The company is tiny, 42x less valued than Zoom and doesn’t appear profitable. It isn’t growing in the right direction at the moment. If anything, it is a reason for why Zoom shouldn’t do what Jitsi or 8x8 are doing.

Re: Zoom to bring end-to-end encryption to all users, including non-paying

#407
post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/stop-saying-virtue-signalling

Attempting to remove a word or phrase is exactly the kind of impractical behavior I expect from a virtue signaler. And with the annoyingly pedantic reasoning about how it's not technically signaling they way economists use the term is just the cherry on top. Virtue signaling is real, so is the misuse of the term, like every other, but so what.

This seems like pro-virtue-signalling-as-a-term virtue signalling. We get it, you want all the other people who use the term virtue signalling to like you.

ALWAYS dismissive and reductive. ALWAYS. It's not a good faith argument. If you think someone is all-talk-no-action, accuse them of being performative. If you think someone's cause is dumb, attack that. You can call ANYBODY advocating for a viewpoint a virtue signaller so it is an entirely meaningless attack.

Re: Zoom to bring end-to-end encryption to all users, including non-paying

#408
post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems to work fine for 8x8, who maintain Jitsi.

8x8 is valued at about 1/10 of what zoom is worth, and has seen a declining valuation over the last 1 year. most of 8x8 revenue comes from sources and products unrelated to jitsi. so, i don't think you can say that it seems to work fine for them compared to zoom.

Are the numbers different for you? 8x8 appears to have a market cap of $1.55B vs Zoom’s $67B. 40x difference.

Re: Zoom to bring end-to-end encryption to all users, including non-paying

#409
post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This could be the case for literally any E2EE service that controls key distribution (including WhatsApp, Signal, etc.), especially when there's no way to verify key fingerprints (here Signal differs because it does have a way, and it's open source so you can be more confident that it's not BSing you). It's shocking to me how often this is glossed over when discussing E2EE services: you still must trust the platform.

"E2EE" is kinda antonymous with "key distribution" (unless, maybe, if you mean authentication keys)

Well the crux of E2EE is authenticity, so yes. Key distribution is a fundamental problem of public-key cryptography: you can’t get my public, authentic identity key without trusting someone to not tamper with it along the way. We implicitly trust [Zoom|iMessage|Telegram|...] to do this.
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