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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

#381

Post by kyuudou »

mushufasa wrote: post #121
nvahalik wrote: post #51

Earlier 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?

HighFive seems to be popular where I'm at. I like, it works. I have a couple of minor UI complaints but overall it's fine. I haven't seen it in use with large (say, >20 people) meetings, though.

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

#382

Post by innomatics »

J5892 wrote: post #284
gonehome wrote: post #7

This kind of thing is the exact reason why I was disturbed by the Keybase.io sale to Zoom and abandoned my account. ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23105253 ) I've been currently using Zoom during the pandemic because as a product it's still the best (and I signed up for a discounted year of pro), but I won't give them any money again.

Whoa. I didn't know that. Even though my trust of Zoom isn't completely eliminated (yet), that absolutely negates my reasons for using keybase. Granted, I haven't used it in a while because they put me in a position where recovering my account is impossible.

Can you elaborate on how keybase put you in that position?

If by 'recovering' you mean recover after a lost key, then I'd regard that as a feature not a bug!

Am looking for a keybase alternative now.

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

#383

Post by OJFord »

cutemonster wrote: post #137
kodablah wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A similar silence occurred when Marriott fired the guy over the tweet about Tibet. In fact, they were forced to apologize [0]. I kinda hope Zoom is forced to apologize by China as well to at least clarify the type of company they are. 0 - https://twitter.com/MarriottBonvoy/status/951344031405084673

> Zoom is forced to apologize by China Why would China want them to apologize? (Or there's a typo?) Didn't zoom do what C wanted already

Cf. the Marriott apology in GP's link - it would be further to the action already taken, rather than retracting or apologising for it.

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

#385

Post by est »

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…

> I see people on HN defending Zoom all the time.

> its product development has been based in China, and that some Zoom calls were accidentally routed through Chinese servers.

Curious, did you background check every employee/contractor to make sure they are Chinese race free?

Did you do every byte of your network traffic audit to make sure they are not Chinese IP routable? How often do you update your firewall rules?

Because if you don't do either of these, if you run a successful company, someone will write an article to complain you have employed a Chinese developer and routed traffic to China.

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

#386

Post by crazygringo »

vezycash wrote: post #379
crazygringo wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got no idea. I literally said I don't personally like it, so obviously I do take issue. But there's no scandal with Zoom in this particular case. And this certainly isn't anything new about China. Why people are downvoting something so factual is beyond me. You'll have to ask them.

> Zoom accidentally deactivated a US-based account, and fixed it when they found out. This is why I downvoted your comment.

Do you care to explain why? Because what I said is factual.

They stated they aim to "limit the actions we take to those necessary to comply with local law", in this case their action went beyond that limit, and now that they're aware, they fixed it.

And I see no evidence otherwise -- this is not something they've shown any pattern of behavior in. It appears to be a one-off.

Any conspiracy-mongering that Zoom is nefariously in cahoots with the Chinese government to intentionally try to sneak in an extra blocked account just begs credulity.

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

#387

Post by DreamScatter »

alexland wrote: post #308
ican1 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there an objective way of distinguishing between an activist and a bigot? The CCP can just say that they consider this activist to be a bigot. Internet platforms should never have been in the business of censorship. Unfortunately, liberals encouraged them to censor their political opponents for short term gain. The result is sad but predictable. Any speech that offends someone powerful is now subject to possible c…

The easiest distinction between activism and bigotry is to tolerate everything except intolerance itself. Activists mostly fight for more rights/freedom, and bigots mostly look to prevent that. It's not a perfect boundary, but I've found it works well for the significant majority of cases.

A lot of activists are highly intolerant of views and speech which don't align with their activism, so your argument isn't really a very good one.

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

#388

Post by dang »

shaan1 wrote: post #261

Has anyone noticed, if you mention chinese, you actively get your point decreased by one point.

Please stop breaking the site guidelines. Nationalistic flamewar is not welcome here. Insinuations of brigading and other abuses are not ok (because the vast majority of the time, people are simply making them up to explain something they noticed and disliked). Going on about downvotes is also against the rules.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#389

Post by [deleted] »

strogonoff wrote: post #82
jedberg wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Security and ease of use are always a tradeoff. Security and ease of use are not by default mutually exclusive. Depending on circumstances satisfying both may be a challenge, but it’s not a blanket impossibility and we could probably hold certain companies up to a standard that corresponds to their multi-billion valuations. A virtual “slider” on which you can only dial up security by hurting usability is only a use…

[deleted]

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

#390

Post by johncolanduoni »

est wrote: post #385
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…

> I see people on HN defending Zoom all the time. > its product development has been based in China, and that some Zoom calls were accidentally routed through Chinese servers. Curious, did you background check every employee/contractor to make sure they are Chinese race free? Did you do every byte of your network traffic audit to make sure they are not Chinese IP routable? How often do you update your firewall rules?…

There’s a big difference between routing an encrypted packet through China and decrypting that packet on a server located in China.

Likewise, there’s a big difference between employing a Chinese national in the US and having a large part of you engineering organization operate from within China.

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