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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

#91

Post by frabbit »

ethanbond wrote: post #65
coronadisaster wrote: post #63

governments monitor all major companies... including the US government (PRISM is pretty old now, so we can assume that they monitor others by now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program) ). So if the traffic is not end-to-end encrypted, assume that they can view your traffic. Sometime they play on words and say that end-to-end means from customer to cloud... but the cloud should not have the key.

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.

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

#92

Post by robocat »

Novukus wrote: post #49

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…

I mostly agree with what you are trying to say, but being snarky is against the hn guidelines. Edit: “against” is too strong a word - it isn’t a hard rule but I often see the hn community react negatively to sarcasm and snarkiness even though the content may be worthwhile.

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

#93

Post by odshoifsdhfs »

vikramkr wrote: post #62
at_a_remove wrote: post #35

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…

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 not the target? Heck, lets have white-men only private schools again, let's leave those blacks/gypsies/whatever out, after all, it is a private school so it should be able to discriminate against anyone.

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

#94

Post by jedberg »

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…

> It’s worth keeping in mind that even though security and ease of use tend to inversely correlate with each other, they are not by default mutually exclusive.

I actually disagree with you. I think security and ease of use are mutually exclusive.

I can't think of a single counterexample where security did not have an effect on usability.

Now to be clear, I absolutely believe we should have a lot more security than we do, and we should be giving up usability to do it. But I think that it is necessary to give up usability.

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

#95

Post by paulgb »

hanniabu wrote: post #52
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.

> 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.

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

#96

Post by oneplane »

jessaustin wrote: post #47
nothal wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's going to happen when he's gone? Does the next leader understand well enough? How about the next? It's the same reason we're seeing so much strife in the US. In the US, societal opinion and legislative action hardly follow the same path. In fact, IIRC, public opinion has almost no impact on legislation. Wonder why everyone here feels like we're going down the wrong track?

...when he's gone? Wishful thinking is a temptation, but it doesn't lead to reasonable analysis. Xi is in fine health at the age of 66. His father lived to the ripe age of 88. His mother is still alive, at 93. We can expect him to receive better medical care than they did, since he is leader of China and they spent several decades getting purged, imprisoned, overworked, and starved by the party. If the Chinese people…

The 'when' is known because there is a limit to life (as far was wek now). So even if that when is in 40 years, it's still a when ;-)

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

#97

Post by laumars »

ethanbond wrote: post #65
coronadisaster wrote: post #63

governments monitor all major companies... including the US government (PRISM is pretty old now, so we can assume that they monitor others by now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program) ). So if the traffic is not end-to-end encrypted, assume that they can view your traffic. Sometime they play on words and say that end-to-end means from customer to cloud... but the cloud should not have the key.

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”

Whataboutism is usually done to defend something by making it look better in comparison but what the OP was arguing is that we should be pursuing end to end encrypted solutions exclusively because it’s not just the Chinese government who are doing the snooping. ie he’s not defending Zoom nor the Chinese government but suggesting the complaint against Zoom/China doesn’t go far enough

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

#98

Post by mstade »

hanniabu wrote: post #52
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.

> find another solution Have you tried Jitsi?

Jitsi is great! If they can figure out a good webinar solution it could be an absolute killer. As it stands, it's (in my opinion) really just useful for small scale interactive meetings at this point, not 100+ participant events.

It's really great as a face-to-face solution though, where Zoom and many others are actually kind of overkill.

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

#99

Post by criddell »

duxup wrote: post #12
ordinaryradical wrote: post #4

Aiding 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…

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” -Martin Luther King Jr. This observation seems more immediate these days internationally than ever.

This feels like the kind of thing that the CEO of Zoom should be asked about under oath by a congressional committee. It's supposedly a US company so it would be interesting to see just what influence the Chinese government has over it and why.

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

#100

Post by gniv »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #90
Twixes wrote: post #25

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?

My company tried to use Google Meet. With a group of around 16 people, Google Meet had all sorts of connection quality issues—people's voices cut out while talking, sounded garbled, etc. 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.…

> Google Meet had all sorts of connection quality issues

When was this? Google Meet has gotten a lot better in the last few weeks.

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