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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?
If it's a client I have a comfortable relationship with, I'll tell them honestly why I won't use it.
If not, I tell them "I can never get Zoom to work on my computer" or something similar, and provide an alternative.
Earlier 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…
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 useful map, not the territory.
I wonder if we'll hear the "they're a private company, they can do what they want, it is only censorship if the government does it" routine. I remember about a decade ago when certain parties were so concerned with voices being silenced and "erasure." The same people are now cheering when Facebook, Twitter, and the like shut down certain kinds of speech, with great discretion as to how the "rules" are implemented. Th…
At least you recognize your slippery slope fallacy when you make it!
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.
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?
- General preference for non-ad supported business model.
- Google Meet wasn't an option until very recently.
- I really dislike hangouts and how it leaks chat all over Gmail (among other things), and this has biased me against their other products.
- Similarly, I was a huge fan of Google Voice which was way ahead of its time and which they abandoned for years until many other multi-billion dollar companies rose up and took the space.
- I've anecdotally heard Meet had worse video/audio quality from friends.
- I tend to try and avoid Google chat products since they're usually a mess and often killed.
Of all of these, the first and last are really the only valid reasons.
Google Meet does have its own scummy practices though (adding itself to meetings without asking which confuses participants and is extremely annoying, Benedict Evans tweeted/wrote about this).
Maybe Jitsi works well enough to actually use? I already have a Matrix server, I could try getting friends to use that instead (realistically probably will be difficult).
It is ironic how the western public generally frowns upon the silencing of dissident throught in China, and at the same time welcomes precisely the same behavior for "sensitive topics" back home.
It isn't, because you are wrong. Do not compare (I assume) the warnings around Trump's lies to be comparable to blocking human rights activists from a platform outright.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> find another solution Have you tried Jitsi?
It's a bit difficult to understand what exactly that means. There's Jitsi Meet, Jitsi Desktop, there's a browser extension, a server-which-isn't-just-a-server etc. It's a bit confusing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would agree if there were multiple competing private companies with comparable market shares, representing the opinions of different social groups. This way, if certain companies started applying censorship that wouldn't reflect the interests of the users, they would lose the market share and would have to listen more to what people want. Instead, we have an effective monopoly on online search, monopoly on content…
> China could technically spin off their censorship functions to a privately owned company that would wholly depend on the state-issued license to operate and would keep doing exactly the same thing. If the private company requires a state-issued license, and that license is dependent on the content on the site, then it's still government censorship. In America, you can still start a competing private company and all…
I really don't think it's about the wording you put on the decision maker's badge. It's about who's interests they represent and the structure of their incentives.
Government-drivern censorship is bad, because their incentive would become to stay in power no matter what. Monopolies act the same way.
Guys, guys, it's fine. According to everybody on HN who's so eagerly embraced Zoom and continued to use it even after the security issues, the only thing that matters is that Zoom is the best UX experience for video conferencing. Forget about the human rights, suppression of free speech or the fact that the company is wholly subservient to the CCP (not like anybody could've ever foreseen anything like this ever happe…
So everybody is cool with youtube removing videos and banning channels of RT, Sputnik and pro-Russia accounts; but Zoom doing just the same for the very same reason somehow makes everyone feel bad for Zoom .
Don't you see the difference between state-sponsored outlets like RT and the individual activists Zoom banned?
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.
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?
A week later, we tried Zoom instead. We could hear everyone clearly. We've used Zoom ever since.
I had some say in the decision to continue with Zoom, and I feel kind of bad about choosing it, but it's hard to argue with the results. We had similar issues with Slack video calls (although we still use those for small groups—not my decision!), Microsoft Teams, and a product from LogMeIn called Join.Me. Unlike Zoom but like Google Meet, these products are all based on WebRTC, and I'm starting to conclude that WebRTC is just a crappy technology for large-group video calls.
We admittedly haven't tried Jitsi. Perhaps I'm part of the problem, but I don't want to be the one to suggest a random product no one has heard of. Especially when that product is also based on WebRTC.