Frankly Zoom (i.e. video conferenceing) has been essentially pointless for K-6 education.
Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern
61–70 of 230 posts
Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern
#62A bit tired of the "critical infrastructure" argument. People are very quick to put all sorts of things into the category. He mentions network effects as the only real moat in the article. If Zoom fails at being a product, people will move away.
> If Zoom fails at being a product, people will move away. Literally. As in being evicted from their home: https://www.fsf.org/bulletin/2020/spring/trial-by-proprietar...
This is so unbelievably messed up, reminds me of Black Mirror.
Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern
#63Zoom is only going to stay widely adopted until an easy, viable alternative comes along and gets in the good graces of people in charge. There are some alternatives now, like Facebook's group calls on WhatsApp but that one's fallen out of favour for obvious reasons.
Thinking about it another way, consider the poor usability and experience of WebEx/Lync and juxtapose that to Zoom -- Zoom just works without any friction.
A future Zoom-killer app would need to provide that much better service.
Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Working for a company that deals with security, I have definitely run into customers that would think I was crazy if I asked them to use anything other than Zoom or Webex. Some are even limited to webex only.
Really? If you want to one-click-add a Zoom meeting to your Google calendar, Zoom requires read history to your full Google Calendar (including all history!) That seems incredibly intrusive. How do corporations even allow access for this particular features?
Most people in companies are not IT people or IT security people. The ones raising concerns are often only heard, when it is too late.
How often have I heard silly arguments against safer tech like: "The people are not IT people, they want something simple!"
Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Working for a company that deals with security, I have definitely run into customers that would think I was crazy if I asked them to use anything other than Zoom or Webex. Some are even limited to webex only.
It goes in many combinations. Where I work now, it's Teams internally and Webex externally, with Zoom being explicitly banned, with at least two strongly worded e-mails reminding us to make it double plus sure we don't have the Zoom client installed. At the same time, outside of work, I was videocalling people on Skype, and my wife had classes delivered via Zoom.
Not sure what' worse, Zoom or Teams. Seems like "pick your poison". A coworker once looked at Teams console. I had logged over 700 errors. Often we cannot hear people, although their tech is completely fine. It's just Teams being bug ridden and excluding people.
Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern
#66Not sure why there isn't more open source alternatives in this realm. Since I only run Linux, I was amazed the first time I used Zoom that it had an actual working linux client. I've always had hopes that webrtc would take over. There's been demo's of video conferencing done over webrtc 5+ years ago and I always hoped it would get more traction. The best I've found lately is "Unamed"[0] but it is the product of one a…
Jitsi is pretty well-known and you can run a server yourself; are there any problems with it?
Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
And unlike many other services, the network effect is quite low because I can easily install multiple video conferencing software or even run some in the browser. If someone organising a meeting asks to use something unusual, I'm normally not that bothered.
Working for a company that deals with security, I have definitely run into customers that would think I was crazy if I asked them to use anything other than Zoom or Webex. Some are even limited to webex only.
What about Google meet? It has the same security regulations as the rest of their enterprise software.
Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern
#68> But in many of the verticals in these sectors—such as banking or mobile phone services—no single company dominates the market.
Gmail dominates e-mail in a similar matter.
And remember just a year ago barely anyone had even heard of Zoom -- there's still Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, FaceTime, Skype...
This piece feels like it's trying to stir up worry over nothing. Yes, critical business software tends to have outages once or twice a year. But no, Zoom doesn't appear to be any obviously better or worse than the competition.
Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern
#69Is this a submarine written by Microsoft PR? Seems very likely it could be. Seems to boil down to: "Little upstart company can't be trusted with important business, better buy from an established player."
My company prohibited and even remote-force uninstalled zoom and mandated Skype or MS Teams right after the last rash of bad zoom PR. I feel pretty certain there was coordination from our Microsoft account manager and Microsoft's PR team on this front. The funny part is that Skype is famous for zero days while zoom is famous for people running pseudo public non-password protected conference calls that got invaded by…
The less funny part is that to the HN users who together made https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23555226 my current most upvoted comment on HN, Zoom is known for “a history of shadiness (MacOS hidden server to prevent uninstallation), outright lies (E2EE), and attacking the pillars of democracy (censoring Chinese Americans discussing Tienanmen Square).”
Not that MS isn’t shady, dishonest, or even a deep state tool of oppression (in light of the Snowden leaks, and at least in some people’s view Github’s ICE contract).
Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern
#70Would it be crazy to suggest that the postal service be reabsorbed back into the government and also given the role of managing all government communication channels?