I'm trying to understand the justifications for this is the activist is US-based. If CCP has an issue with someone within their own country, that is one thing but this is something totally different.
Zoom closes account of U.S.-based Chinese activist after Tiananmen event
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Re: Zoom closes account of U.S.-based Chinese activist after Tiananmen event
#152Aiding in the Chinese media's censorship is not good for China nor the world. When a government destroys the ability for it to be criticized it becomes untethered from consensus reality; megalomaniacs can take the reins and a kind of national hubris forms that can lead to devastating conflict and oppression. All governments need open dissent and criticism to keep from going down this path. Zoom should not be aiding a…
You're not considering the real and terrifying strengths that dictatorship has over democracy. In true democracies the politicians never undertake a plan that lasts longer than one election term because they have no incentive to do so. In China they feel free to undertake 20 year plans with large upfront investments because the party does not care about winning an election every 2-4 years.
Why do you automatically assume that elections provide a reality check? Would you say that the Democrats and Republicans in the USA are tightly coupled to reality given their frequent elections? On the contrary I believe that elections merely tie legislative actions towards what voters perceive as electable. It doesn't matter what the PATRIOT act does as long as a political ad can sell the idea of "safety" to you. Politics in democracies have devolved to little more than entertainment.
On the other hand, China has achieved something very close to a technocracy where rules are based on expert opinion. The economy is controlled by economists, health policy is controlled by epidemiologists, and media censorship is controlled by political and social scientists. You are more likely to advance based on competence in Chinese politics than you are in the USA, where elections are just a high school popularity contest. The Chinese government has plenty of terrifyingly competent bureaucrats.
Re: Zoom closes account of U.S.-based Chinese activist after Tiananmen event
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
As much as I don't like consolidation of tech, I've had really good experiences with Google Meet. No scummy practices like forcing users to pretend that the app installer doesn't download just to connect from the browser either. What are Zoom's advantages?
The main reason I liked Zoom was because it was so easy to install. I've had zooms with non-technical people over 70, and not one of them needed help installing it. The same cannot be said of Google. Heck, as a technical person I have trouble getting Google Meet to work consistently. That was Zoom's main advantage -- their ease of setup and use, and "it just works". We now know that part of the reason that is the cas…
I went around the office helping colleagues setup Zoom around mid-March before the UK went into "lockdown" and told people to work from home if at all possible, because it was obviously going to happen soon and the company wanted at least a stop-gap solution in place while everyone was still in the building with easy access to our IT team.
In my experience setting up accounts and installing the Windows software for 15+ people in one afternoon, I cannot believe what you're saying. Unless Zoom has gotten way easier to setup and use since March, it is a nightmare.
It's been a while, but I'm fairly sure was basically like this: 1) Enter email into website 2) Click link in email 3) Enter name and password 4) Invite others or skip 5) Click to start a meeting, which actually starts a download 6) Install software, meeting starts automatically 7) End meeting 8) Manually log in to Windows client despite it starting a meeting on your account immediately after installation
That is not easy or accessible to non-technical people at all, especially with how they hid certain buttons as really pale grey during the signup process. It was also a nightmare trying to oversee this process, and repeating it on each machine for those who got lost trying to do it themselves took ages due to waiting for emails, people deleting the email thinking it was spam, downloads not starting due to requests timing out, etc.
Then, a few weeks after we all started working from home, Zoom removed the automatic Company Contacts list and suddenly we could only contact colleagues through existing group chats. No warning, no explanation, not even a reference in the changelog or help pages on their website - rather, the help guides still said the feature was available and explained how to toggle it on or off. Everyone spent that morning adding all their colleagues as personal contacts by manually entering emails one-by-one and then accepting all the invites they received in return.
Zoom is useful once you get it working, but it is definitely not easy to get it working for non-technical people.
Re: Zoom closes account of U.S.-based Chinese activist after Tiananmen event
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
They can do whatever they want as a private company. I can do whatever I want as well. Including leaving zoom. They should have the right to enforce whatever standards they want, and we have the right to disagree and leave.
I really don't understand this. I am not American so may have a different perspective, but if by being private, you are ok with censoring, then you are ok with anyone banning blacks from their businesses, or not hiring gays, or only allowing women to go up the corporate ladder if they sleep around. After all, it is their private company, so why should I care about sexual harassment, blocking people, etc as long I am…
I can anticipate the counter-argument to this: "well, discrimination based on race and gender is illegal, so they can't do that".
Which is true, but kinda misses the point: it amounts to a position that discrimination and censorship is ok as long as it doesn't run afoul of local laws. If local laws reflect the totality of ethical and moral positions, that would be fine, but I think we all know that laws tend to fall far short on that metric.
But I'm also sympathetic to the overall thrust of this. Let's say for a minute that hosting/distributing child porn wasn't illegal. Would you then call Zoom out as somehow evil for shutting down accounts that broadcast child porn live? I'll assume that people would be happy with Zoom shutting down something like that, and are also generally fine that there are laws banning child porn.
So then it's impossible to hold a "no censorship at all" position, at least not without being a hypocrite. It's really "I don't like censorship, but it's appropriate in some narrowly-defined cases". Once we agree on that -- which we kinda have to, because that's the reality of the situation -- then it just becomes a matter of agreeing on what those "narrowly-defined cases" are, and of course I'd expect there to be disagreement.
For example, I'm fine with a private company deciding they don't want to be used as a platform to distribute racist hate speech. But I'm not ok with a private company shutting down the account of someone organizing events around the Tiananmen massacre. But as long as people (including myself) are willing to say "well, none of the other videoconferencing solutions are good enough for my needs, so I'll look the other way", they can get away with whatever they want.
Re: Zoom closes account of U.S.-based Chinese activist after Tiananmen event
#155Only last week, it was announced by Zoom's CEO that free accounts are unencrypted, to enable law enforcement agencies. Now we read that PAID accounts are suspended for their contents. Hence, the encryption is obviously a farce.
> Only last week, it was announced by Zoom's CEO that free accounts are unencrypted, to enable law enforcement agencies.
I missed that one, do you have a source?
Re: Zoom closes account of U.S.-based Chinese activist after Tiananmen event
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. Assume that governments and large companies can and will spy on you and act accordingly. Do not get suckered into some simplistic nationalistic narrative in which "our" side is good.
There's two problems with that line of thought. First, "our side" is not good but it is better. Notwithstanding the current unpleasantness, the US government isn't locking up and "reeducating" hundreds of thousands of its own citizens. Second, good or bad, it is our side and the CCP is the other side: only an ethically and intellectually challenged person offers tacit support for the "other side" because their own si…
I don’t personally see it as a competition about which side is worse. I see the lack of end to end encryption as more like a security hole that needs fixing irrespective of whether you trust one side more than the other.
Re: Zoom closes account of U.S.-based Chinese activist after Tiananmen event
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
> find another solution Have you tried Jitsi?
I've wanted to like Jitsi, but the quality difference with Zoom is noticeable. Same with Google Meet and anything I've seen that uses WebRTC. They remind me of RealPlayer back in the early 2000s in terms of blockyness. I would love to know about any Zoom competitors, free or paid, with comparable quality.
Jitsi Meet works fine as long as you do not use Firefox.
W.r.t. the general meme about WebRTC, this is old (2018) and explicitly does not claim to be anything other than suggestive: https://jitsi.org/blog/a-simple-congestion-test-for-zoom/
Re: Zoom closes account of U.S.-based Chinese activist after Tiananmen event
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
> he dare not dismount Sounds as if you think he wants to dismount
I think it was more a statement that it's difficult to maintain that facade perfectly, and a big misstep could bring the whole thing crashing down.
> could bring the whole thing crashing down.
Hmm yes I guess for him personally maybe, however to me the overall system looks stable
Re: Zoom closes account of U.S.-based Chinese activist after Tiananmen event
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
Zoom is a company I have loved so far, but a lot of this is starting to really rub me the wrong way and I really don't want to have to go find another solution. However, without some sort of reversal, this is enough for me to deal with the mess of doing that.
I've tried Google Meet, Jitsi, and some other things, but Zoom is the only service that my 6+ year old laptop can handle for more than 5 min without nosediving into 100% CPU usage and freezing up. Does anyone have other suggestions? Either for other services or for troubleshooting Jitsi?
With Jitsi the main thing is the browser, you should try different versions of Firefox & Chrome.
Re: Zoom closes account of U.S.-based Chinese activist after Tiananmen event
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not all governments are equal. Cut out this whaddaboutism. Edit: When I replied, OP was simply “governments monitor all major companies... including the US government”
S/he is not saying all governments are equal in all respects. As far as we know only the Chinese, Russians and the 5-Eyes have the technical capacity to monitor us all and have been caught out doing it. So yes, you are correct: not all governments are equal, but the US and Chinese are similar in their practical totalitarian capacities.
In the US system you are free to criticize the government. In the Chinese and Russian systems you are not. That alone tells me all I need to know about who I want scooping up my data.