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Not Using Zoom

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Re: Not Using Zoom

#191

Post by pama »

aparnabzoom wrote: post #178
cameldrv wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They explicitly said “we do not”, not “we will not.” The ToS and their statements allow them to change their mind at any time without notifying anyone.

We’ve updated our terms of service (in section 10.4) to further confirm that we will not use audio, video, or chat customer content to train our artificial intelligence models without your consent. https://blog.zoom.us/zooms-term-service-ai/

I do not think that blog posts have any legal value whatsoever. The current terms of service are too risky for most companies who would otherwise have loved to continue to be users of your product.

Re: Not Using Zoom

#192

Post by saltcured »

michael_adams12 wrote: post #186
michael_adams12 wrote: post #129

This is Michael Adams, Zoom’s CISO. I want to reiterate our thanks for your feedback and emphasize our continuing commitment to protecting our customers’ data as we make exciting improvements to Zoom products. At Zoom, we do not use customer audio, video, and chat to train our generative AI models without customer consent. You can learn more about enabling generative AI features, consent, and notice here: https://blo…

Thanks very much for your continued interest and feedback. Our updated blog clarifies our approach: https://blog.zoom.us/zooms-term-service-ai/ Most importantly - we’ve updated our terms of service (in section 10.4) to further confirm that we will not use audio, video, or chat customer content to train our artificial intelligence models without your consent.

I think a large number of people here will still find these terms lacking. Specifically, we will reject the idea that one account admin can make a consent for all users.

I would much prefer to see users empowered to not just be "notified" of an account admin's decision but to have per-user consent. Regardless of what my employer (or a collaborator's employer) might think, I do not consent to feeding my voice, video, or screenshare content into AI training.

And I think there should be a middle ground between "tolerate the admin's decision" and "don't participate". I understand certain scenarios require this, such as recording of all contributions to an important meeting. But, I don't think you should apply this heavy-handed approach to other derivative use. A user should be able to communicate with peers without being coerced into consent for all other usage an account admin might be interested in...

Re: Not Using Zoom

#193

Post by brightlancer »

lucideer wrote: post #83
AbraKdabra wrote: post #10

I came directly to the comments to recommend Jitsi instead. Glad the author made the same early in the article.

Jitsi's free SaaS is a great resource to have available but it's not really viable for many many (most?) use-cases. Apart from general stability issues (which is in fairness are always improving) the biggest blocker is the "Video turned off to save bandwidth" message that you will inevitably receive on any call with more than 2 members. This doesn't seem in my experience to just be something that occurs occasionally…

> the biggest blocker is the "Video turned off to save bandwidth" message that you will inevitably receive on any call with more than 2 members.

It's not inevitable. I use Jitsi every week for a 3+ hour meeting and I haven't seen that error in more than a year.

I don't remember if I ever tracked down what was causing it, but it may have been high latency or low bandwidth on my end (which I resolved about a year ago).

Re: Not Using Zoom

#194

Post by brightlancer »

I recommend Jitsi over Zoom for lots of reasons, but "AI" isn't some magical new danger point.

* Most of the legal terms are standard for internet services.

* Any and all unencrypted internet communication will be monitored by the services hosting that communication.

* If we replace "AI" with "automation tools", then this is a nothing burger.

Or to put it another way, Does anyone really think Zoom (or other internet services) aren't running automated tools to catch/ block/ report child porn? How do folks think those automation tools are trained?

If you don't want service providers monitoring your communication, ENCRYPT IT. Otherwise, it doesn't matter if they're using the "AI" boogeyman or older automation tools.

Re: Not Using Zoom

#195

Post by rexreed »

aparnabzoom wrote: post #176
aparnabzoom wrote: post #52

Hi there, I'm the COO of Zoom. We currently do not use audio, video or chat content to train AI models and we would not do so without customer consent. Please see our blog https://blog.zoom.us/zooms-term-service-ai/

Based on feedback from you all, we’ve updated our terms of service (in section 10.4) to further confirm that we will not use audio, video, or chat customer content to train our artificial intelligence models without your consent. https://blog.zoom.us/zooms-term-service-ai/

There's definitely more that can be done in terms of setting trust with your users, partners, employers, and suppliers - I posted a comment elsewhere on whether or not you have a posted and shared Trustworthy AI policy, and something that is used to guide internal AI development. Happy to email that to you as well.

Re: Not Using Zoom

#196

Post by jlokier »

jcoder wrote: post #185
jlokier wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's subtler than that. You are not the customer.

Say more things. Are you suggesting that by “customer consent”, they mean the consent of someone other than those of us paying for zoom? That makes no sense, and is not supported by the use of “customer” in their TOS.

No. I'm saying "you" are the person in the Zoom call and who agreed to the Terms of Service when you installed the software, but the "customer" is the Zoom account owner, and these are usually not the same person.

Most people in Zoom calls at any moment are in calls where they are not the customer for that call. I would guess most Zoom users have never been customers in that sense, as in they never initiate calls and may not have an account.

Re: Not Using Zoom

#197

Post by jcoder »

jlokier wrote: post #196
jcoder wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say more things. Are you suggesting that by “customer consent”, they mean the consent of someone other than those of us paying for zoom? That makes no sense, and is not supported by the use of “customer” in their TOS.

No. I'm saying "you" are the person in the Zoom call and who agreed to the Terms of Service when you installed the software, but the "customer" is the Zoom account owner, and these are usually not the same person. Most people in Zoom calls at any moment are in calls where they are not the customer for that call. I would guess most Zoom users have never been customers in that sense, as in they never initiate calls and…

Sure, and I think all-party consent should be required if a call has any guests. My point was much shallower—just that OP/Zoom is using language that suggests “customer consent” is some separate thing they would ask for, when in fact using the software (accepting the TOS) is that consent.

Re: Not Using Zoom

#198

Post by korginator »

At work, there is a whole process and checklists for "approved" software. Zoom is one of them. Most Microsoft software are in this approved list. Our work laptops are locked down and you can't install anything. Our development laptops are a bit more open, but they are monitored as well. However this is not the issue.

How do you get a whole organization of several thousand people to move from zoom to another platform? In my experience, this has only happened because the provider simply could not meet the QoS/ToS, or they were priced out.

Also, most people just don't care. They just want something working well. We've got Cisco webex and Microsoft teams, but guess what most people prefer? Zoom. Because "it just works better".

Re: Not Using Zoom

#199

Post by DANmode »

brightlancer wrote: post #193
lucideer wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jitsi's free SaaS is a great resource to have available but it's not really viable for many many (most?) use-cases. Apart from general stability issues (which is in fairness are always improving) the biggest blocker is the "Video turned off to save bandwidth" message that you will inevitably receive on any call with more than 2 members. This doesn't seem in my experience to just be something that occurs occasionally…

> the biggest blocker is the "Video turned off to save bandwidth" message that you will inevitably receive on any call with more than 2 members. It's not inevitable. I use Jitsi every week for a 3+ hour meeting and I haven't seen that error in more than a year. I don't remember if I ever tracked down what was causing it, but it may have been high latency or low bandwidth on my end (which I resolved about a year ago).

I resolved it by asking my partner to use something for the meeting other than Firefox.

Worked.

Re: Not Using Zoom

#200

Post by KingOfCoders »

amoss wrote: post #108
KingOfCoders wrote: post #70

My problem as a coach is, everything else is bad. Google Meet video quality feels like the 90s, they optimize for traffic costs. MS Teams is not easily usable from a meeting URL, but quality is higher than Google Meet. Other offers are often unreliable or low quality. When working with a trainer for my language/pronunciation I also found out that many solutions have abysmal sound quality, Zoom is best by far.

> MS Teams is not easily usable from a meeting URL Why not? You click on the link and if Teams is installed it opens the local copy. If not then you can do the call in a browser. What is the difficulty?

Last time I've tried it wants you to register and/or login, it sometimes loses the meeting in the process, you then are left with an application that tries to be Slack and you try to find the meeting in the app again, if you logged in to a different account than the invite to the meeting it gets lost etc.

But it might be different today, for those problems I try to not use Teams for some time.

Also if you use Teams all the time the experience might be different.

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