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Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

brookings.edu

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Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

#171

Post by Kalium »

renewiltord wrote: post #75
boogies wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

Honestly, this one is so strange to me. UK government services somehow generally tend to be total rubbish but one of them is actually top-tier: gov.uk They have accessibility and access and all these baked into the design AFAIK. I don't understand why American govs have such a hard time on this. Some are larger than the UK and have problems!

The UK is a deeply centralized place. There are only a few layers of devolved government, that you may or may not be subject to. There is an ability to set and enforce standards centrally.

The US is not. A federalized system means that various components work mostly separately from one another. A county court has sharply limited resources, and no ability to ask the federal government to send it a cadre of web developers. The state it's in may not provide a ton of resources for such things at the county level either.

The actual question here that may wind up a big deal is if a Zoom hearing is the equivalent of a physical one. If it is, failing to show up means forfeiting the right to be heard. Whether it's Jitsi instead might not be a substantive difference.

Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

#173

Post by Thlom »

AdamJacobMuller wrote: post #81
citizenkeen wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife sees doctors at four different clinics. Each has chosen a different remote meeting solution. It's non-negotiable - to see your doctor remotely, you need to use their software. And that's just in one field. I'm not concerned about Zoom monopoly at all.

With COVID my grandfather has been doing telepresence visits with his doctors, for COVID among other reasons. Mostly they were using a 3rd party solution like webx/zoom/etc but one doctor (automated in an online form) noticed his number was tied to iMessage and offered to just FaceTime him at his appointment time. Super easy for him (at 94) to self-manage vs any other solution where we (my mother or myself) need to b…

If they were texting the doctors messages would be blue if recipient had iMessage and green if normal SMS. Most likely how he found out he had an iPhone he could FaceTime.

Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

#174

Post by PretzelFisch »

ssivark wrote: post #123
scottlamb wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And "when Zoom goes down, teachers can’t teach"? Come on. I am a college professor. In my class this fall I met my students on Blackboard on Day 1 and Zoom on Day 2. If one of them goes down for the day, we'll switch to the other. I think it's for real. Think about elementary school instead. The kids are just learning to use computers. Their parents may be also, and if not they may be trying to do their own work fr…

Then that would be part of essential learning experience (not being locked in to arbitrary applications) —- as important as reading and math. If Zoom goes down, so long as there’s some other service, the teacher can send out URLs to the class via emails, and people should be able to get setup quite easily, and help each other out. There will be some corner cases which will involves a bit more of a struggle, but it sh…

There is the cost of the other service, the districts/school have to have contracts with both. The teachers and students have to be trained on both. If webex does not work for the day our school is out. In our district although the teachers can work remote( most do) when the school site loses power or has fire evacuation orders instruction stops for all it's students.

Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

#175

Post by Thlom »

trthomps wrote: post #147
mjevans wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is, and it can work; but it also doesn't typically get the fully blessed experience a first party app does.

Duo integrates into the latest Android like FaceTime integrates into iOS, it would be nice if Apple made FaceTime / iMessage available on Android (lol, never gonna happen) or allowed Duo to integrate into iOS like 3rd party apps can in Android (like WhatsApp video calling does). Probably the biggest feature I miss from Android since moving to iOS. Apple is probably doing more harm than good at this point for themselv…

I'm not sure if Apple ever explained why they didn't open up FaceTime? I seem to remember that when they presented it they said it would become an open standard?

Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

#176

Post by trthomps »

anon3280 wrote: post #169
trthomps wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US Government is representative of all voting American citizens, you cannot compare it to a private company that is run by people who are not elected.

I agree. The US Government is pretty impervious to change. For example, people still get arrested for smoking weed. Most o America supports decriminalizing weed. Why is it still illegal? Shouldn't the government enact policies that most of America agrees with? I mean... don't most of us agree that if a private company were doing any of this stuff, they would lose all their customers ASAP: - https://arstechnica.com/te…

I was very careful to word my previous comment to say the US Government represents the voting population. In 2016 there were only 157M registered voters, and only 138M voted in the presidential election that year. The population of the US was 321M in 2016 making the US Government represent approximately 43% of the overall population at best, most elections have a far lower turnout.

I didn't say the system was fair, but it's still not a fair to compare a private company to how a government is supposed to function. Governments enforce laws and provide public services. You want things to change? vote for it.

Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

#177

Post by toast0 »

fsflover wrote: post #146
impendia wrote: post #71

I don't buy it. The same factors that made Zoom easy to adopt, make it equally easy to switch to something else. And "when Zoom goes down, teachers can’t teach"? Come on. I am a college professor. In my class this fall I met my students on Blackboard on Day 1 and Zoom on Day 2. If one of them goes down for the day, we'll switch to the other.

> The same factors that made Zoom easy to adopt, make it equally easy to switch to something else. Did you hear about network effect?

What network effect does Zoom have other than word of mouth? I've seen people enter meetings with links or meeting ids, not from a friends list.

Some of the conference tools need/want a client or a specific browser, so there's some amount of benefit from already having used it, so you don't need to install it, but not a whole lot.

Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

#178

Post by toast0 »

Thlom wrote: post #175
trthomps wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Duo integrates into the latest Android like FaceTime integrates into iOS, it would be nice if Apple made FaceTime / iMessage available on Android (lol, never gonna happen) or allowed Duo to integrate into iOS like 3rd party apps can in Android (like WhatsApp video calling does). Probably the biggest feature I miss from Android since moving to iOS. Apple is probably doing more harm than good at this point for themselv…

I'm not sure if Apple ever explained why they didn't open up FaceTime? I seem to remember that when they presented it they said it would become an open standard?

There have been persistent rumors of an issue with patents.

Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

#179

Post by bobloblaw45 »

m11a wrote: post #151
impendia wrote: post #71

I don't buy it. The same factors that made Zoom easy to adopt, make it equally easy to switch to something else. And "when Zoom goes down, teachers can’t teach"? Come on. I am a college professor. In my class this fall I met my students on Blackboard on Day 1 and Zoom on Day 2. If one of them goes down for the day, we'll switch to the other.

I am still confused how Zoom ended up being used this much, especially by less technical people. The UI is not intuitive at all, the options are a mess, and the product doesn't even know what audience it's trying to cater for. Every other Zoom call I've been in someone is having a technical error or confusion (even technically-inclined people). That considered, at least in principle, it shouldn't be that hard for a c…

It's funny because I went back to school but worked as the printer guy within an IT dept for about 5 years before deciding to go back to school. Our dept kept going back and forth on what video conferencing we should use for our meetings for about 2 years, they just couldn't make up their minds. Not once was zoom ever mentioned. I was kinda shocked once schools (everyone almost actually) started universally using zoom because that's the first I've heard of it and I was aware of at least half dozen other options.

Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

#180

Post by scottlamb »

hooande wrote: post #105
scottlamb wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And "when Zoom goes down, teachers can’t teach"? Come on. I am a college professor. In my class this fall I met my students on Blackboard on Day 1 and Zoom on Day 2. If one of them goes down for the day, we'll switch to the other. I think it's for real. Think about elementary school instead. The kids are just learning to use computers. Their parents may be also, and if not they may be trying to do their own work fr…

This would be a large inconvenience and a disruption, but that doesn't justify one private company being considered critical infrastructure. This view is generally antithetical to innovation. Even if everyone already knows how to use Microsoft Office, it can and should be replaced if better software comes along.

> This would be a large inconvenience and a disruption, but that doesn't justify one private company being considered critical infrastructure.

Is "critical infrastructure" some sort of official US Government designation? What automatically happens in response to this designation?

Note that:

* I only said teachers sometimes can't teach when it's down—a claim of fact, not any suggestion of how it should be handled.

* The article's only extension of that is "Organizations that rely on video conferencing—and today, that’s most organizations—would be well served to put backup plans in place to minimize the disruption from future Zoom outages."

> This view is generally antithetical to innovation. Even if everyone already knows how to use Microsoft Office, it can and should be replaced if better software comes along.

I think you're suggesting calling Zoom "critical infrastructure" means it can't be replaced if a clearly superior video conferencing product is available? I disagree. In fact, it'd be reasonable to say this means it _should_ be replaced if Zoom can't give rock-solid reliability SLOs.

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