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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

#311

Post by rubyfan »

belval wrote: post #201
mushufasa wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It's not free but I've had a lot of success with Amazon Chime which handles calls very well and support people "calling-in". Full disclosure: I am doing an internship at Amazon, but my experience predates me working there.

Chime doesn’t work on a lot of corporate networks

Re: Zoom closes account of U.S.-based Chinese activist after Tiananmen event

#312

Post by YarickR2 »

IAmWorried wrote: post #160
frabbit wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Have you tried to criticize government in Russia ? Have you tried to criticize it in the US ? If not , then how could you compare these cases ?

Re: Zoom closes account of U.S.-based Chinese activist after Tiananmen event

#313

Post by close04 »

pfarnsworth wrote: post #281
ljm wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my workplace and from my perspective, I don't know how Zoom became trustworthy in the first place except through growth hacking and selling iPads with their software on it under the 'Zoom Rooms' name. Besides that, why defend a company or a corporation in the first place? It's a damn shame that people are more enervated by corporate strife than by the suffering of our fellow beings.

To be fair, Zoom is the best video conference software I've ever used. It's so much better than Skype or anything created by Google, Facebook, etc. When I first started using it at work 5 years ago, I was blown away at how stable it was, and how many people could connect at the same time. It just worked.

Then again talking about videoconferencing solutions and immediately comparing to Google or Facebook, and not mentioning something like Cisco Webex is like talking about mail and immediately comparing to Yahoo.

And before you say "but Zoom is free", obviously it's not. From the carefully orchestrated lie about "end to end encryption", to the routing of calls through China, and to the topic of this article. At every step they catered to companies more willing to look just at the price and never ask a single question.

Re: Zoom closes account of U.S.-based Chinese activist after Tiananmen event

#314

Post by pvg »

robocat wrote: post #249
dang wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a hard rule! https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I thought the the word “guidelines” usually implied something more flexible. Thank you for the clarification (I certainly appreciate the limited snarkyness and toxic sarcasm within the hn community).

"I got your hard rule right here" would have been a perfectly fine reply, I think, so your initial impression is probably not that far off the mark in practice.

Re: Zoom closes account of U.S.-based Chinese activist after Tiananmen event

#315

Post by trilinearnz »

pfarnsworth wrote: post #281
ljm wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my workplace and from my perspective, I don't know how Zoom became trustworthy in the first place except through growth hacking and selling iPads with their software on it under the 'Zoom Rooms' name. Besides that, why defend a company or a corporation in the first place? It's a damn shame that people are more enervated by corporate strife than by the suffering of our fellow beings.

To be fair, Zoom is the best video conference software I've ever used. It's so much better than Skype or anything created by Google, Facebook, etc. When I first started using it at work 5 years ago, I was blown away at how stable it was, and how many people could connect at the same time. It just worked.

Totally agreed. The thing I think contributes most to this impression is how local voice is recorded at all times on the client, and then replayed at a higher speed to the other participants if the connection drops briefly. This enables others to hear what was said, without having to listen to the speech at the original pace, which would result in a delay. Genuis!

Re: Zoom closes account of U.S.-based Chinese activist after Tiananmen event

#316

Post by mfkp »

staycoolboy wrote: post #64

Is anyone here boycotting use of Zoom? I have a few clients that ask me to use it and I'm trying to think up a good response as to why I don't have it installed. For those of you that have rejected it on principle, what are you all saying?

Just say "our company policy does not allow using Zoom due to security concerns", then suggest an alternative that you prefer.

Re: Zoom closes account of U.S.-based Chinese activist after Tiananmen event

#318

Post by Polylactic_acid »

_b3dj wrote: post #206
ciarannolan wrote: post #8

I feel like the good faith presumption for this company has to have shifted by now. Is there any reason not to assume that the Chinese government is surveilling Zoom calls en masse? Documenting participants (face, voice, language, location, etc.), recording content, etc. We're talking about the data of 200M+ users. I see people on HN defending Zoom all the time. >The company has acknowledged that much of its product…

>The government of Taiwan banned official use of Zoom due to security concerns, as have New York State schools, the U.S. Senate, and the German ministry of foreign affairs. This is good enough reason to not use it. Also I stopped using zoom and trying to avoiding it as much as possible after the very first vulnerability scandal[0] came about [0] https://medium.com/bugbountywriteup/zoom-zero-day-4-million-...

Iirc google also banned the installation of the zoom client on work devices.

Re: Zoom closes account of U.S.-based Chinese activist after Tiananmen event

#319

Post by angott »

Polylactic_acid wrote: post #318
_b3dj wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The government of Taiwan banned official use of Zoom due to security concerns, as have New York State schools, the U.S. Senate, and the German ministry of foreign affairs. This is good enough reason to not use it. Also I stopped using zoom and trying to avoiding it as much as possible after the very first vulnerability scandal[0] came about [0] https://medium.com/bugbountywriteup/zoom-zero-day-4-million-...

Iirc google also banned the installation of the zoom client on work devices.

To be honest, that's also because they probably want their employees to use one of their 37 different video-conferencing apps.

Re: Zoom closes account of U.S.-based Chinese activist after Tiananmen event

#320

Post by close04 »

rubyfan wrote: post #303
ljm wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my workplace and from my perspective, I don't know how Zoom became trustworthy in the first place except through growth hacking and selling iPads with their software on it under the 'Zoom Rooms' name. Besides that, why defend a company or a corporation in the first place? It's a damn shame that people are more enervated by corporate strife than by the suffering of our fellow beings.

it’s trusted because it actually works vs terrible solutions like Microsoft Skype, Webex, etc.

At least Skype and Webex don't accidentally route your calls through China. I don't really like Skype but Webex shines compared to either Zoom or Skype. And I'm talking meetings with triple digit attendance, meetings with dozens of simultaneous breakout sessions and screen sharing, etc. By far a better experience than Zoom.

The thing that Zoom really has going for it is that it's free and heavily marketed. This made it popular with a lot of people. But it's exactly the people who are least prepared to make an informed decision (and yes, I count a lot on "company men" here). The reasons are sprinkled all over every Zoom article.

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