Zoom needs to clean up its privacy act

https://blogs.harvard.edu/doc/2020/03/27/zoom/

by seapunk • 6 years ago

1597 508 6 years ago

blogs.harvard.edu

geoffeg3• 6 years ago

As quarantined millions gather virtually on conferencing platforms, the best of those, Zoom, is doing very well.

Why would Zoom care about their privacy issues if they're doing so well off? Seems like that's a good amount of positive reinforcement that their current approach is the right one to them. Maybe they'll lose a few thousand customers because of it, but given what I'm sure was a huge increase in the past few weeks, why would it be something they're concerned about?

chaps4• 6 years ago

Because it's the right thing to do.

luckylion5• 6 years ago

Right, but they are a US corporation in California. The "right thing to do" is pretty much at the end of their priorities list.

nck42223• 6 years ago

I agree, but Zoom is a publicly traded company. Their incentives aren't necessarily aligned with the public good.

The question is "why should Zoom leadership care about the recent privacy concerns if the vast majority of their customers don't care?"

Their stock is up over 6% today while the market is down 4% (volatility caveats here obviously). So far the privacy concerns don't seem to be impacting the companies short or long term prospects, so I wouldn't expect the company to do the right thing.

bryanrasmussen2• 6 years ago

Because the EU is on lockdown, lots of EU citizens now using Zoom, and all of those users are potential liabilities due to GDPR issues.

seanhunter4• 6 years ago

The UK cabinet has been meeting on Zoom during the crisis. It was in a media shot issued by 10 downing st yesterday.

api4• 6 years ago

The unfortunate wisdom in business is "nobody cares about privacy or security," and in my experience it's true. Outside a small number of people nobody even asks these questions.

With our own product ZeroTier we get maybe 1-2 questions a year about privacy and so far only a few enterprise customers have even asked about the security of encryption and authentication. "It's encrypted" is good enough for 99.9% of the market. Encrypted with what? A cereal box cipher? Nobody cares.

What do people care about? In my experience its ease of use, ease of use, ease of use, ease of use, and ease of use, in no particular order. An app that's a privacy and security dumpster fire but is very easy to set up and use will win hands down over a better engineered one that requires even one or two more steps to set up.

seanhunter4• 6 years ago

My experience is diametrically opposite to that. All of our clients are large enterprises and the security and privacy features are very closely examined during procurement literally every time. We haven't had a single client conversation that is remotely like what you're describing.

Might be because our clients are banks but they really care about this stuff.

yjftsjthsd-h• 6 years ago

With our own product ZeroTier we get maybe 1-2 questions a year about privacy and so far only a few enterprise customers have even asked about the security of encryption and authentication.

Why would people ask you that? You already put the answers in the public documentation.

randomsearch• 6 years ago

OTOH if you’re making money from your product why trash it yourselves

bradly3• 6 years ago

The reason Zoom is doing so well is part of its vulnerability. There is very little vendor lock-in with virtual conferencing platforms. If something new/better comes out next month, there isn't much a company will give up by switching vendors. There is little to no infrastructure to setup/maintain. This is the same reason Slack's popularity has skyrocketed. Because of the lack of history and transient nature of the content shared in them, these areas are quick to gain popularity, but also quick to be replaced when a better product emerges.

kardos• 6 years ago

This is the same reason Slack's popularity has skyrocketed. Because of the lack of history <snip>

Slack's business model [1] is storing all history and charging for access for it. Nothing transient about that.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slack_(software)#Business_mode...

quickthrower25• 6 years ago

We switched from Zoom to Slack as soon as we realised we could use Slack and it’s much easier. But there is a 15 person limit so we’ll switch out for something else in a bigger meeting. It’s too easy to switch.

closeparen• 6 years ago

We have a few thousand conference rooms around the world wired from Zoom. Much of it is probably commodity hardware that could be reconfigured for another platform, but it would still be a massive undertaking.

Tokkemon• 6 years ago

Is Zoom the best though? Google Hangouts seems to be just as good.

primity2• 6 years ago

I use both at work, and Hangouts has less features and struggles more noticeably with bad connections. I consider Hangouts worse

jacobobryant• 6 years ago

For me, zoom consistently has far better A/V quality than hangouts.

So we have two anecdotes now I guess.

thekyle3• 6 years ago

I tried Google Hangouts on Firefox on Linux but couldn't get it to work at all. It just errored out before starting the call.

primity2• 6 years ago

Ah yes, in my case it doesn't agree with firefox at all. I have chrome installed pretty much for hangouts only.

Wowfunhappy10• 6 years ago

I can’t say what happened there (Hangouts works fine for me in Firefox), but Zoom won’t let you use Firefox at all if you want audio.

ThePowerOfFuet7• 6 years ago

They just (like yesterday) fixed a bug that prevented Meet from working in Firefox in some cases, such as when privacy.resistFingerprinting was set to true. Give it another go.

RMPR• 6 years ago

"Seems". Some people reported that Zoom handle gracefully more participants than Hangouts and performs better on a slow connection, see this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15717701 and this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16155155

There are probably a couple of others you can find here and there.

Edit: Well, this thread also.

RyanShook• 6 years ago

Everyone mentions Jitsi on HN but I'm guessing AV quality isn't as good as Zooms...

detaro2• 6 years ago

Jitsi is nice for just video chat with a few participants (I use it where possible). Zoom is the more polished product, with more features and better scaling (Zoom calls with 90 attendees just work in my experience, I'd not trust Jitsi with that)

buro9• 6 years ago

Try it at 12 people.

Try it when you want to control who is speaking and when.

Try it when you want to co-ordinate hundreds of participants and still want to track who has a question so you can hand the virtual mic / airtime to them.

Try it when you want breakout groups and to determine who is in which group, and after a set time for the groups to return to the main space.

What is good enough for 2 people facing each other, and appears to work perfectly well for a group of 5 or 6... doesn't quite scale to a company all-hands, or giving a lecture or seminar.

Tools fit a scale, and Zoom is excessive for the small and simple use-case but excels at the large and complex.

Spivak3• 6 years ago

Which is a long way of saying that Zoom is one the few companies that has been around long enough to deal with all the edge cases. Throw a few devs in a room for a bit and you'll get a perfectly usable video chat for 1-1 or a small group, but you won't get Zoom.

OrangeMango• 6 years ago

I appreciate listing the areas in which Zoom beats competitors. It helps people understand where work should be done on alternatives.

My company has been remote-only for about 1.5 weeks now and we have 4 different conferencing systems that people are using. It's interesting that everyone has their preferences, but for small meetings nobody is using Zoom as far as I've seen.

floatingatoll6• 6 years ago

Try it at 600 people, with at least 50 unmuted. (Not a made up example. Zoom worked, last week, for us.)

quaffapint• 6 years ago

We just used it at work with 500+ people. After all the various teleconferencing crap we paid $$$ for, we couldn't use them because they couldn't handle it. Zoom worked flawlessly.

holler• 6 years ago

My experience with google hangouts over the years has been that it's a poorly made product. It does work "ok" for 1-1 but the video quality would frequently drop or not connect at all. Zoom just "works".

ltrcola• 6 years ago

I like Hangouts overall, but the killer feature that's missing is a good gallery view where I can see more than 4-6 participants at a time. Zoom is really good at this.

mikestew3• 6 years ago

I have a need for Zoom, virus or no, but the point of the article is why I don't give them money. Give them money, while the company is apparently still going to worry about milking advertising dollars out of me? That's just going to be a strong "no". As the final paragraph of TFA says, either charge more or give away less for free. But if you're selling me out to advertisers after I've given you money, then you're one of "those" companies that I avoid if at all possible. Because they're skeezy. You don't want to appear skeezy, do you, Zoom?

So for now Skype and MS Teams works fine, or at least fine enough that I don't bother with Zoom. Which brings me to a side question: what is the value proposition for Zoom? What does their product do so much better than the others that I'd put up with this shit? Why am I hearing the hell out of it lately? Outstanding PR department?

EDIT: thanks for your answers to “why use it, then?” Because “it just works” seems to be the summary, which hoo boy, one cannot say about a lot of the competition.

binarymax2• 6 years ago

To answer your last question - it works very well. I've used lots of virtual meeting software over the past 20 years, and zoom is by far the best.

I agree with your sentiment though - it makes me angry that they're selling my personal data. But sadly I don't think that any companies will voluntarily be non-skeezy...we really need laws and regulations in this space. I don't trust capitalism to take care of my privacy. If companies can get more money without breaking the law, they will absolutely do so.

chadash• 6 years ago

Very very well. I haven't seen any issues with zoom and yet mine and everyone else's usage has gone up 10-100x. It's very user friendly and It Just Works.

Meanwhile, my company's VOIP acting funny. Conference calls not working. My wife was having issues with skype.

Yes, there are alternatives out there, but i'm yet to see one that is easy to use and reliable in the same way.

mikestew3• 6 years ago

That, indeed, answers my last question, thank you. I suspected the answer might be along the lines of “it’s not a tech support shit show”, but my one opportunity to use it this week was cancelled. I’ll try again on Saturday for something someone else is hosting, and find out for myself.

bt3• 6 years ago

My take: Zoom is very approachable outside of enterprise. Skype (although historically has its roots with regular folks), is mostly used in a "Skype for Business" config. MS Teams is much the same way.

Good PR helps too, I suppose.

binarymax2• 6 years ago

Skype for business has terrible UX. Traditional Skype works great for one-to-one, but can't handle a room full of people.

chanmad29• 6 years ago

Does anyone know what could Facebook do with such video calling data?

PS- I hate misuse of my data as much as the next person.

bryan_w• 6 years ago

It's data to help them track if their ads lead to installs. It's not the content of the video calls themselves

impendia7• 6 years ago

What does their product do so much better than the others that I'd put up with this shit?

I'll share my perspective as an academic. Many of us have adopted Zoom, practically overnight, for our teaching, for one-on-one meetings with students, and even for conferences [1].

The answer is: It just works. It's easy. It does what we want it to, with a minimum of fuss.

As someone who now has a whole bunch of unanticipated shit to deal with, this is one less thing to worry about.

I definitely share your objection in principle. If this situation continues long into the future (a terrifying thought), then perhaps I'll revisit my choice of software. But in the short term, to be honest, I don't much care.

[1] https://www.daniellitt.com/agonize/

hobs4• 6 years ago

Really trying to figure out a response that isnt flip - but if you give up your principals when something is difficult, why have them at all?

tboughen• 6 years ago

I’m interested to hear the type of institution and age range of students with whom you are having 1 to 1 video calls. I’m a teacher in an 11-18 secondary school in the U.K., and we have been instructed to avoid 1 to 1s with students as a safeguarding risk.

I’m not casting any aspersions here, I’m only interested in comparing notes with a fellow teacher.

api4• 6 years ago

I also doesn't max out all four cores of my laptop and run my fans like a hair dryer like all the web based ones I've tried.

nathankunicki• 6 years ago

The answer is: It just works. It's easy. It does what we want it to, with a minimum of fuss.

I guess I'd like to know the details of how its easier than the other of myriad of products on the market for you?

At my company we use Slack Video calls, WebEx, and Zoom, and they seem as identical as each other (I'd argue Slack is easiest since we're all logged into it all the time, but that's us).

holri2• 6 years ago

It is a trap. Traps are especially effective and harmful in panic mode when everyone catches the first bait. In the long run, free software (not as in beer) is much better for everyone. Especially in panic it is essentiel to think thoroughly through your decisions.

hashmymustache• 6 years ago

At a major academic medical center, we’ve been using it for massive town hall and department meetings and it has been working flawlessly. Very impressed.

bchociej5• 6 years ago

I mean, so do all the major WebRTC video chat programs. Google Meet is absolutely painless, and I can use it in the browser instead of downloading Zoom's very sketchy application.

CydeWeys3• 6 years ago

The answer is: It just works.

I've actually found the opposite to be true. Google Meet is an example of a product that just works. Zoom, by contrast, pushes you very heavily into downloading and installing an application on every device you want to use it with, and provides a secondary degraded experience in the browser if you find the right link to use it (which you have to do EVERY SINGLE TIME; there doesn't seem to be a way to permanently opt out of the "install this application" nag flow).

chronofar• 6 years ago

The answer is: It just works. It's easy. It does what we want it to, with a minimum of fuss.

I think the real reason is "it's just what everyone else was doing." All of these apps "just work," as someone who has used a veritable gaggle let me tell you there's scarce difference between them. Except zoom makes it more difficult to join without the app (others work in the browser outright, zoom tricks you into installing).

Zoom I think just happens to be one of the trendiest. But with this kind of behavior there's really no reason to use them.

gentleman11• 6 years ago

I definitely share your objection in principle. If this situation continues long into the future (a terrifying thought), then perhaps I'll revisit my choice of software. But in the short term, to be honest, I don't much care.

Do the students not care?

neumann• 6 years ago

it kinda works. I've had a lot more luck running massive meetings with the open source and free alternative jitsi. Their offering https://meet.jit.si/ is amazingly simple with no installs and definitely 'Just works' to the point that in lockdown I use it for family catchups, large friend coffee + beer catch ups and all meetings because all I need to do is send people a URL and they literally just have to click it with no plugin installs etc.

wenc• 6 years ago

I've used Skype (for business and normal Skype), FaceTime etc. The Zoom experience is just much better for larger groups (> 10).

I use Teams at work and would say it is comparable to Zoom in terms of AV quality (Microsoft owns both Skype and Teams portfolios, but Teams is built on a modern codebase that runs on different, markedly superior infra than Skype). Unfortunately Teams only works in the enterprise (O365), and it is still fairly new so it doesn't have a lot of the collab functionality like whiteboarding and breakout rooms that Zoom has.

Privacy issues aside, Zoom really is a better product. People are more forgiving of a product's peccadillos when it just works.

Gene_Parmesan• 6 years ago

I think you hearing a lot about it because (a) everyone is quarantined and wanting to use the tools they use at work to help setup book club meetings, table-top RPG sessions (did this last night and it actually worked great), etc. (b) it's perhaps easier to use than some others, (c) there's likely a huge PR push right now, and (d) I believe its pricing is better for non-enterprise use than others.

My company's virtual meeting solutions are a mess; it's the one really messy area in our tooling. For the longest time we had GoTo, but then the dev team specifically also had hipchat for Slack-like interactions. Then hipchat went away, and for some reason the org took that as a cue to do an org-wide rollout of MS Teams, with no approval for us to use Slack. Somewhere along the way certain people somehow acquired Zoom licenses and started using those. Then just about two weeks ago the whole org was told to switch to Zoom, but now not enough people have licenses and all the old GoTo licenses are kaput.

Anyways, the reason I have heard various people from the business side give for why they like Zoom is "GoTo was too hard to use." I don't really see that, and I also wonder if there's some sort of 'FOMO' going on. A couple big vendors we interact with use Zoom, Zoom is big in the news currently -- "everybody uses Zoom!" I do also think it's maybe a bit cheaper at enterprise scale.

I don't mind Zoom from a UX/call quality perspective. I think Alt-A to unmute is super unintuitive but that's a very minor quibble, and for all I know shortcuts are customizable. I am, however, very discouraged by Zoom's privacy story as we're discussing here.

---

As my own side note, I am generally on board with almost everything MS has been doing lately -- we're mostly a MS shop as they help us with pricing, given we're a nonprofit, while AWS told us 'no chance' -- but Teams has to be the single buggiest MS product I've ever used. Just now, over the past month or so, I've noticed it very slowly improving. But for the first year of our usage, we experienced constant issues. Dropped calls, silent crashes, daily sync failures. My favorite one was, every time I would shut down Teams, it would relaunch itself a few seconds later with a message saying "sorry, Teams has crashed, we're recovering." Apparently every time the program received a shutdown msg it just assumed "oops, another crash."

ChrisMarshallNY2• 6 years ago

Zoom is the first video conferencing platform that I've used, that works reliably. They are gonna come out of this mess smelling like roses, no matter what carbuncles are exposed.

I've been doing videoconferencing for over 30 years (Yes, they had it back then -we used PictureTel systems, over ISDN).

I regularly participate in Zoom meetings with 20 or more attendees. I know of ones that have over 400.

An amazing thing to me, is that technophobes can pick up on it very easily. Very little of that pre-meeting "Mute your mike!", "Can you hear me?", "Whose dog is that?", tons of texts, asking for help, etc, stuff.

Skype is very bad for more than a small handful of attendees.

WebEx and GoToMeeting are OK, I guess, and I've heard good things about BlueJeans.

But Zoom is what I use, and Zoom is very popular with people that suddenly need to gather, and can't do so, physically.

vosper• 6 years ago

WebEx and GoToMeeting are OK, I guess, and I've heard good things about BlueJeans.

GoToMeeting has had a banner up for the past few days asking people not to dial in on time for their meetings, because they can't handle the current load. My company uses GTM for everything, but there have been problems. We'll probably switch to Zoom.

flattone• 6 years ago

Nothing works good enough to be worth forfeiture of our self respect

michaelbrooks• 6 years ago

Have you taken a look at [0]WhereBy? It's been recommended as a great alternative to Zoom.

[0]https://whereby.com/

Dunedan2• 6 years ago

If I'm not mistaken they don't offer Desktop apps and their browser experience has been just plain bad for me. Using Firefox on Linux I wasn't able to get mic and camera to work. While it did detect them just fine, it didn't allow enabling them. I tried that on multiple devices with the same result, so my take is that they consider Firefox as a second-class citizen.

jwr• 6 years ago

I use Whereby every day and it's fantastic for small meetings. People don't have to install anything, just click a link and it works.

ksec• 6 years ago

I think whereby deserve to get more attention from the HN crowd, although the Founder did say they are working hard on the extreme interest for the past few days. So may be give them a few more days before a separate submission on HN.

floatingatoll6• 6 years ago

Compared to the other ten or twenty videoconferencing solutions, it's the only one that has worked reliably and without accessibility issues for technical and non-technical people in my life. The automatic video and audio processing features make it so that a day-one user has as good an experience as a year-two user, and I haven't had to answer any technical support questions about it to my family.

FaceTime is the only serious competitor I can think of that's able to deliver as quality of a call experience in a 1:1 setting with non-technical participants, but it's inaccessible on Windows/Android for starters, and lacks the presentation chops to be used in a business setting.

epanchin• 6 years ago

Not much different to Microsoft. Buy Windows, still get tracking and ads. I use it because it’s convenient.

Hard to justify moving from zoom to ms teams when Microsoft have shown they don’t care about privacy either.

memco• 6 years ago

So many replies here have identified the value of Zoom: it is easy to use and has reasonably good quality. So the questions I have: can we add to this? Are there ways to use Zoom more privately?

Personally I haven't seen many people offer up alternatives that are clear winners. They all have tradeoffs. Since there's tradeoffs I have a hard time moving people to some other direction. If I could says, "Oh Zoom is nice, but Schmooz is the best!" I know people who'd make the move. Even if it's paid.

collyw• 6 years ago

Having used a few of these lately, it seems to have the best quality of call.

Skype is terrible some days. Google hangouts is OK. Cisco Webx is dead in the water every time I have tried to use it.

Maybe I just haven't used Zoom enough as the other two do have good days and bad days.

loudmax• 6 years ago

If your concern is privacy, why are you using Skype and MS Teams?

If you don't want a third party getting your contact information, then use a private solution that's actually private. Jitsi and Matrix are open source solutions that both support video conferencing.

jamaicahest2• 6 years ago

Because Teams actually has a decent privacy policy: "As a customer of Office 365, you own and control your data. Microsoft does not use your data for anything other than providing you with the service that you have subscribed to. As a service provider, we do not scan your email, documents, or teams for advertising or for purposes that are not service-related. Microsoft doesn’t have access to uploaded content. Like OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online, customer data stays within the tenant. You can check out more about our trust and security related information at the Microsoft Trust Center. Teams follows the same guidance and principles as the Microsoft Trust Center" https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/security-com...

chaz• 6 years ago

Give them money, while the company is apparently still going to worry about milking advertising dollars out of me?

Does Zoom have ads? I haven't seen any. I believe all of the ad tracking is for the reverse: Zoom wants to see if their own advertising is effective. For example, if they buy an ad on Facebook that you saw and then you install the app, they can attribute the install to that ad and measure ROI.

notreallyauser• 6 years ago

They can track that from the clickthroughs. The adtech economy is far richer that just showing ads and tracking ads -- the suggestion is that they're feeding data from your use of Zoom to enrich your advertising id(s) to help others provide you the most relevant possible advertising experience / track the living daylights out of you.

Delete according to world-view.

pergadad• 6 years ago

Alternatives might be Jitsi and the 8x8 supported by Jitsi tech.

gray_-_wolf• 6 years ago

Because “it just works” seems to be the summary

I am using it in chromium on linux, and I can tell you it does not just work. The audio is really really shit (constant crackling). I'm basically unable to attend meetings on zoom. Luckily most of them are in google meet which works fine in a browser.

Dunedan2• 6 years ago

You could just install their native app which is available for Linux as well and just works. It's also a real native app and not the usual Electron-based crapware.

SnowflakeOnIce• 6 years ago

Many music teachers are doing online lessons now, mostly via Zoom.

It seems that Zoom is the only popular videoconferencing software these days that allows you to disable all the postprocessing on the audio signal (echo cancellation, noise reduction, etc) through advanced settings. This postprocessing is very useful for /conversation/ meetings among many people with bad audio setups, but for two musicians and music signals, the postprocessing is highly detrimental, causing strange audio artifacts and causing instruments to drop out sporadically.

(It seems like there would be a market for videoconferencing software optimized for musicians, where the audio signal is sent at higher quality, given higher priority, and not postprocessed in detrimental ways. And without all the privacy concerns.)

eitally2• 6 years ago

This is an interesting use case. I know these features exist for what would be considered "enterprise" VC platforms. Having administered both Vidyo & Bluejeans previously, at least, I know the admin has pretty discrete control over the codec behavior.

gowld2• 6 years ago

I don't get it. I get that you don't like the adalytics-based business model, you don't use the product. But I don't see a rational basis for making that conditional on cash price, which is an independent concern. It only makes sense if you value the product at somewhere between the cash price and (the cash price - the adalytics cost), and $0 cost is exceedingly unlikely to be the exact boundary.

It only makes sense if you make the unsupported leap in logic that says that the cash price is itself promise to not use analytics. But you are willing to accept $0 adalytics-supported products, and FOSS exists and some has adalytics and some doesnt, showing that $0 is not any kind of meaningful boundary.

u801e• 6 years ago

So for now Skype and MS Teams works fine, or at least fine enough that I don't bother with Zoom. Which brings me to a side question: what is the value proposition for Zoom? What does their product do so much better than the others that I'd put up with this shit?

For me, it's one of the few video chat clients that works well in Linux. Skype may or may not work depending on the version and whether or not Microsoft supports the Linux client. And I have no idea whether MS teams works at all in Linux.

StreamBright• 6 years ago

> what is the value proposition for Zoom?

Energy consumption. Half hour hangouts drains 30% of battery 3 hours zoom is roughly 5-10%. UX and performance the two major factors why we chose Zoom.

bchociej5• 6 years ago

I'm with you. I have no idea what people like about it that isn't already done better in e.g. Google Meet. Having to download a program is also really crappy IMO. Plenty of other video chat applications work in my browser.

Wowfunhappy10• 6 years ago

Having to download a program is also really crappy IMO. Plenty of other video chat applications work in my browser.

You know, even two hours ago I'd have agreed with you, but my thinking is evolving.

It's pretty clear from responses in this thread that there is a quality difference between Zoom and Hangouts/Slack/Teams/etc, at least under certain circumstances. In addition, anecdotal reports are that if you do insist on joining Zoom via a web browser (even though their user flow really pushes you not to), Zoom's quality goes down a lot.

So perhaps the reason Zoom is superior is because of its native app. Whereas Slack and Teams's apps are just Electron clients that use WebRTC, Zoom is doing something truly custom. It seems to be paying dividends.

Not everything has to run in a web browser.

holidaygoose• 6 years ago

You might not using it that much I'm guessing. It's meant for power users like teachers, academics, government agencies, people who are doing video conference more than once every day and just need to get things done reliably.

Everyone I know has switched to Zoom. It's a clear improvement in a technical sense than all the existing options out there. We're trying to do our jobs, not make a statement and end up embarrassing ourselves professionally.

So no Zoom does not have to clean up its privacy act. Other companies need to improve their software on a technical level to be more reliable and be more optimized. It's ridiculous that companies who supposedly have amazing developers like Google, Slack, Microsoft, Facebook, can't even do teleconferencing well.

PS: You don't have to download a program -- it has an online version.

imagiko• 6 years ago

I just Ctrl+F'd Google Meet and no one seems to be really talking about it. We've been using it for our meetings for a long time and it works really well. I'm wondering why it doesn't have widespread adoption. You can call-in via phone, can log the minutes of the meeting and seems to "just work" too

detaro2• 6 years ago

My impression is that to use it you'd need to sign up the organization for G Suite. Whereas Zoom you can just start for free and then if they want individual users can upgrade their accounts to paid ones. That helps with grass-roots adoption in companies. It's also a clear "we pay for video conferencing", not "we pay for video conferencing and all this other stuff we don't want to use because we already have solutions for it"

squeaky-clean• 6 years ago

Requires a G Suite enterprise account. It also doesn't help that Google Hangouts Meet and Google Hangouts are two similarly named and looking but incompatible products.

https://support.google.com/a/users/answer/7317473

tmpz22• 6 years ago

I said this at the beginning of the crisis and first major rush to Zoom by many companies: their start-up friendly business model is going to bite them hard when they have to blitzscale services and there will be growing pains while they find the right non-vc-subsidized pricing model for long-term customers.

I think we can cut them some slack for now as they are under more pressure then many other tech companies. They managed to make a great product - so presumably they'll be able to build the right processes for the company itself soon too.

imhoguy• 6 years ago

It also just works on Linux - video, screen sharing, window sharing, remote control, whiteboard. Moreover: recording, simple way to mute anyone as host, host less rooms. 1-100 peers? no problem. No need to create account for guests to participatie.

gregkerzhner• 6 years ago

I am also confused about why zoom is the de-facto conference tool now. I have been working remotely for 6 years and haven't really noticed it being significantly better than other tools like Lifesize or Bluejeans. Also, the inability to draw on the presenter's screen is a big negative in my opinion. Trying to pair lately over Zoom always ends in a bunch of stammering like "erase that dot over there.. no... over there... no, up left..."

sytse• 6 years ago

Zoom decided to remove the Facebook SDK in their iOS client https://blog.zoom.us/wordpress/2020/03/27/zoom-use-of-facebo... fixing this issue.

saagarjha8• 6 years ago

There’s still a number of creepy things that Zoom does.

matheusmoreira• 6 years ago

the company is apparently still going to worry about milking advertising dollars out of me

They will never not do that. Paying customer or not, no business is ever going to say "let's give up a huge amount of revenue so we can avoid invading people's privacy and annoying them with ads they don't want to see". To do so would be to miss an opportunity to make even more money.

The fact you're a paying customer also implies you have disposable income and you're willing to spend it. Ironically, paying money to avoid advertising makes your attention even more valuable to advertisers.

The only way they'll stop advertising is if it's not profitable. The only solution is to block all ads and reduce their return on investment as much as possible.

drdrey• 6 years ago

The other way they'll stop is regulations

jamaicahest2• 6 years ago

Wrong. Read Microsoft's policy https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/security-com... "As a customer of Office 365, you own and control your data. Microsoft does not use your data for anything other than providing you with the service that you have subscribed to. As a service provider, we do not scan your email, documents, or teams for advertising or for purposes that are not service-related. Microsoft doesn’t have access to uploaded content. Like OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online, customer data stays within the tenant. You can check out more about our trust and security related information at the Microsoft Trust Center. Teams follows the same guidance and principles as the Microsoft Trust Center."

saagarjha8• 6 years ago

Paying customer or not, no business is ever going to say "let's give up a huge amount of revenue so we can avoid invading people's privacy and annoying them with ads they don't want to see".

Some companies do this and capitalize on it by advertising it.

TheKarateKid• 6 years ago

But if you're selling me out to advertisers after I've given you money, then you're one of "those" companies that I avoid if at all possible.

Sadly, this happens everywhere. Verizon and ATT? Selling your location and data usage patterns for years.

Bank accounts and credit cards? Selling your purchase patterns for decades.

coder1001• 6 years ago

"the best of those, Zoom, is doing very well"

Is Zoom really the best? No other comparable platform out there?

Anyone know how difficult it would be to build something like it on top of aws or a similar cloud?

jamra2• 6 years ago

Web RTC pretty much handles peer to peer video chat. I think you just need a server to organize the call’s, provide chat, and login from

fsh2• 6 years ago

Peer 2 peer doesn't scale for video conferencing with many users. Jitsi only does it for two participants. Everything larger has to go through the server.

Spivak3• 6 years ago

P2P video for large groups is dead over the public internet because you don't get the network's help in doing 1-many delivery.

geoffeg3• 6 years ago

I've been playing around with jitsi (https://jitsi.org/) and have been impressed. I may play around with deploying their server on aws this weekend (via this docker, most likely: https://github.com/jitsi/docker-jitsi-meet)

crazygringo• 6 years ago

I used to work in videoconferencing, and Zoom seemingly came out of nowhere and everybody loved it, because people overwhelmingly said it really is the best.

In terms of actual reliable video/audio experience. When evaluating platforms, other videoconferencing solutions simply suffered quality issues more -- taking longer to start, glitches, latency, pausing, echo, and so on.

Also, the hard part isn't building 1-1 video chat. It's having it work with 20 or 200 separate participants.

I have no idea why they're better except that building reliable audio-video at scale turns out to be a really hard problem, and they seemed to focus their engineering on that specifically.

Kind of like file sync was really unreliable until Dropbox decided to focus on building a sync tool that actually "just worked". Same philosophy. Zoom is the Dropbox of videoconferencing.

rstupek• 6 years ago

"Zoom is the Dropbox of videoconferencing" weird I had the exact same thought yesterday and it even translates to everyone thinking they can build it themselves with gluing tools x,y,z together!

sakopov2• 6 years ago

A while ago I remembered reading that a typical video conferencing/streaming setup on AWS has astronomical costs. I don't remember exactly which AWS services were used in the estimate but it seemed very prohibitive for startups.

angry_octet13• 6 years ago

Yeah it's high bandwidth out (egress costs) and video processing is expensive, whether CPU (more cores * more time) or GPU (expensive instances). You basically have to process every input camera stream in real time to generate miniatures and do change detection (although at a lower frame rate, which you can signal to the client, so rate/resolution scaling is done client-side). VAD (voice activity detection) is client side, one mixer per output stream on the server -- not too bad. Video decode, mixing and H.265 encoding is expensive, but saves on transmission bandwidth.

Then consider that contention is terrible for real time and you would want dedicated instances.

I don't know the zoom architecture, but I doubt they could scale so fast without lots of cloud. I think they have an enormous bill, which they are using capital to pay for because they are becoming a household name.

peterwwillis• 6 years ago

Anyone know how difficult it would be to build something like it

Companies have been trying to build the perfect video chat system for about 30 years. Companies with tens of billions of dollars in cash and more in stock. Almost all of them suck in various ways.

You can stream one audio+video to one person, and you can stream it to multiple people. But then do multiple duplex audio+video streams to multiple people, on multiple platforms, with low CPU, memory, and bandwidth requirements, with user controls, recording, chat, screen sharing, drawing, and 50 other features. Get 49 of them right, and the 50th feature will suck, and your users will hate it and be ready to move to a different product. I think it's one of the most complex user applications that exists.

Medicalidiot• 6 years ago

I am always very hesitant to say anything personal over any video chat medium unless I know it's end to end encrypted. I know that they're not actively watching my video meetings, but it's still causing a chilling effect in how I conduct myself with their service.

angry_octet13• 6 years ago

Zoom works in China, ergo it is being recorded and analyzed. Automatic voice transcription is a thing.

leesalminen• 6 years ago

I just realized this yesterday when Zooming with someone in China w/o a VPN.

thekyle3• 6 years ago

What are some end-to-end encrypted video chat apps? I know Signal offers it but only has one on one calls.

gnusty_gnurc2• 6 years ago

I’ve found Jitsi to be more than adequate with no need to download an app onto my computer. Just share the link with my friends!

sakopov2• 6 years ago

I've tried it yesterday with some friends and in my opinion it's not ready for any serious use. The chat feature looks clunky and sometimes messages don't send on first try, especially the drawing board. Sometimes emojis you send in chat get plastered in the top right corner in about 10 times the size and stay there. I've also had the video feed and all controls disappear in the middle of a live session and the only fix was to close the app and sign-in via invite link. Still happy that something like this exists. Just needs a little bit of polish.

dhimes2• 6 years ago

Agree. The big issue is that non-tech people can use zoom. With Jitsi (which I hope to eventually use mostly), you have to be someone who's willing to fool with it a bit to make it work.

If some of you 10x programmers would go on a Mission from God and get it going that would be super cool.

gnusty_gnurc2• 6 years ago

I used it for a meetup to convene remotely and it worked with maybe 6 or 7 people total. Also used it for movie night with some friends. Worked both times. So idk if I agree it's not ready for serious use (we might have different definitions of serious).

JumpCrisscross2• 6 years ago

I’ve found Jitsi to be more than adequate

Just looked it up. Seems to be Chrome only. As a Safari and Firefox user, that ends my decision-making tree with two clicks.

bennofs2• 6 years ago

They are working on it: https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet/issues/4758. Unfortunately, I think WebRTC support is still not 100% uniform across browsers (there seem to be a range of browser-specific behaviour and bugs), making it hard to easily support all browsers. And Chrome appears to be the browser which implements new WebRTC features the fastest, so I can understand Jitsi Meet focusing their efforts on that platform.

You don't need chrome though, chromium should be enough.

teekert• 6 years ago

On Linux it (obviously) also works on chromium, perhaps it also works on the new Edge? FF would be nice though.

phyzome2• 6 years ago

Worked on Firefox on Linux for me.

tmpynews• 6 years ago

I don't know if it can. Its always bound by its government. By that measure I am really surprised people in large companies trust it. I really am surprised by its adoption.

bena2005• 6 years ago

broken link?

thought_alarm• 6 years ago

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:RxLbT_L...

say_it_as_it_is2• 6 years ago

One major problem for Zoom is that it cannot merely focus on its core video conferencing competency while achieving the growth objectives of a publicly traded company. A high-quality video conferencing platform is hard to replicate until it isn't. The amount of talent and energy being spent right now on video conferencing, as a result of remote work, is going to amount to commoditization of high-quality video conferencing. Zoom has maybe another 12 months of juice left. As a result, it's advancing into new categories and will compete with customers very soon.

I'd be very cautious about sharing information with Zoom. You may be showing it where to fish.

osrec• 6 years ago

So, you think it'll turn into a generalized software consulting company??

say_it_as_it_is2• 6 years ago

No. I think it will be a services provider operating within a "remote economy".

thedance• 6 years ago

How hard can it possibly be to replicate? Zoom walked into a market packed with established players and now they own the whole thing. That suggests the barriers to entry aren't so great.

ShakataGaNai2• 6 years ago

I think the "high-quality video conferencing" is the "hard to replicate" portion. I've used a lot of different conferencing platform and consistently zoom has been: Relatively easy to use, high quality, reliable.

Those last two portions are super critical. No one wants to spend the first 10 minutes of their meeting fighting with their conferencing technology. Also no one wants to sound like robots.

With COVID19 and a ton more people working remote, will there be more competition coming into the space? Sure. But it will take them a lot of work, I'd think, to at least meet Zoom's quality and reliability... and do it either so much better or for so much cheaper to warrant change.

RandallBrown• 6 years ago

Own the whole thing? While I used zoom at my last job, I don't at my current one.

What does zoom do that something like Google Hangouts or Slack doesn't?

dimal• 6 years ago

In 12 months, it won't matter if there are 10 other products offering a comparable service. Companies won't want to pay the cost of switching for something that's "just as good". It has to be 10x better to justify the switch. Consumers won't switch because everyone else will have Zoom. A videoconferencing app is only useful if both parties have it installed.

aliceryhl• 6 years ago

One of the things that are special about the video conferencing is how easy it is to switch compared to many other industries. You wont need a factor ten here.

GekkePrutser2• 6 years ago

Yeah I hate ZOOM sooo much.

First there was the issue with them turning on the camera by default. At least you could turn that off. Then there was the spyware they installed on every Mac without even asking for consent. And now this...

Since the spyware thing I refuse to install their crap on my machine, but one of our suppliers still uses it and the web client is very choppy.. But they'll just have to put up with it. I'm never installing it again.

geoffeg3• 6 years ago

I also find their UI to be frustrating, especially the chat part of it. I have yet to find a way to make the chat more dense, every message seems to have an excess of white space. Also, at least with the company that I use it with, there's no obvious way to search message history.

GekkePrutser2• 6 years ago

Yeah that's an issue with many 'modern' apps. MS Teams does the same :( I really preferred slack but now that MS throws Teams in for free we have to cope with that.

bchociej5• 6 years ago

Agreed. I find the whole experience to be horrible. Especially having to install some garbage executable rather than using my browser. It does nothing for me that Google Meet doesn't do better.

chmaynard2• 6 years ago

First there was the issue with them turning on the camera by default.

FaceTime does this as well, even when I'm making a phone call via Contacts. I hate it.

ThePowerOfFuet7• 6 years ago

Then press the button with a handset instead of the one with a camera; it's called "FaceTime Audio" for a reason.

If you had added them to Favourites and are calling from there, you added FaceTime (video) as the favourite; delete that shortcut and re-add them to Favourites as FaceTime Audio.

brenden2• 6 years ago

Not just Zoom, basically every company.

meritt2• 6 years ago

It works really well.

One that has been a total game changer for my company is when I'm hosting a conference call, I can simply "Invite by Phone" my participants. They get a phone call, are prompted to "Press 1 to enter the conference", and boom they're in. It's drastically reduced people fumbling around with phone numbers + participant codes, ending up in the wrong meeting, or getting stuck in some unnecessary software install loop. If someone is more than two minutes late, they're getting a phone call that brings them instantly into the meeting.

Also a really nice feature, again for phone conferences, is when people dial-in I see their phone number handle in the UI. But during the call as they introduce themselves or I look up their number, I can then rename their user to something recognizable. Now if I'm on a call with 5 people at another firm, I appear really impressive because I know who each person is by their name. When someone is speaking on the conference call, their icon lights up. If someone has a ton of background noise I can easily mute them.

Zoom Phone (addl paid feature) is awesome too. Virtual phone numbers, IVR, call routing, busy hours, I can instantly turn a 1:1 conversation into a zoom meeting that other people can join, etc. Zoom Phone works on my iphone like a regular dialer, and I can place/receive fully digital calls on it (pretty similar to how Google Voice works), so it doesn't matter if I have actual cell service.

I've never used Microsoft Teams, and does look really snazzy, but Zoom is an absolute joy to use compared to every single other conferencing software I have ever used. The video chat and screensharing is fast and responsive and just works exactly like you would expect it to.

Scoundreller2• 6 years ago

Yep. It just works. First time use is nearly instant.

WebEx always took a while to on-board.

panpanna7• 6 years ago

It works really well.

Does it?

Asking because I just left a zoom meeting with horrible sound quality and extremely bad video quality. Why would anyone prefer that to Teams is beyond me.

Edit: interesting this is _heavily_ downvoted. Can't a person have a bad experience and tell HN about it?

stevehawk• 6 years ago

Zoom tells me I have no audio devices and need to reboot every time I launch it. I ignore the message and it magically works fine. Great piece of software /s

meritt2• 6 years ago

I have about a year of near daily anecdotal evidence to the contrary. So, in my experience, yes it works extremely well. I'm not saying it's better than Teams at all, I've never used that, and it looks pretty awesome from their marketing page. Microsoft has really stepped up their software quality game recently.

I can say Zoom is way the hell better than: Slack/Screenhero, TeamViewer, join.me, GoToMeeting, WebEx, Skype, Google Hangouts, BlueJeans, ugh the list goes on over the past years.

floatingatoll6• 6 years ago

Can't a person have a bad experience and tell HN about it?

Not necessarily, no. It's downvoted because it's one low-evidence anecdote amidst comments from people who've been using it daily (two years, here). That doesn't mean it didn't happen, but without supporting evidence it's difficult to find relevance in a single poor call.

Some basic evidentiary questions for you to consider, that would help distinguish between "someone's Internet was broken" (more likely) and "Zoom is defective" (less likely), for example:

1) Was only one participant experiencing issues, or were all participants blurry? Did Zoom warn you that of connection instability? Did Zoom show yellow or red connection status bars for the affected participant(s)?

2) Does your (or their) Internet connection show instability such as high latency (Bufferbloat) when performing a speed test capable of measuring and reporting latency-under-load fluctuations? https://dslreports.com/speedtest

3) Did the sound quality issue involving one or more participants who were not using in-ear or over-ear headphones?

4) Was the sound quality issue reproducible in a followup call for testing? Was it reproducible using "call in by phone" audio rather than "internet" audio for testing?

EDIT:

5) If you stop sharing your video, does the problem improve? If you activate screen sharing, does the problem worsen?

Scoundreller2• 6 years ago

Zoom Phone has been a game changer.

1 of the 2 big cell phone networks we have: Rogers, is regularly failing to connect calls during peak hours for the past week. Being able to do digital calls has changed a lot, and probably took a load off their network.

(I say 2 big networks because Bell and Telus share tower infrastructure, Dunno where it separates out again, possibly just billing.)

jmacd• 6 years ago

I believe Zoom Phone is a whitelabel of RingCentral

geophile• 6 years ago

Their About Us page makes no mention whatsoever of technology. There is no CTO, no VP Engineering, etc. Quite odd. If they were relabeling something else, that could explain it.

collinmanderson• 6 years ago

They do have a partership. I know RingCentral whilelabels Zoom for video, so maybe vice versa for phone.

https://www.ringcentral.com/whyringcentral/company/pressrele...

hpcjoe2• 6 years ago

Having used zoom, teams, skype for business, webex, and many others ... zoom is the only one of these which just works. I'm on the con calls typically 5+ hours a day. Yes, it is soul crushing.

Teams sorta works, though it often messes up with devices. Headsets and speakers (I've got a Jabra speak 710). Often times it handles contention badly.

Skype ... yeah. The less said the better.

Webex. Must be marketing for Zoom and others, given how unreservedly horrible the UX is.

I've also used uberconference some years ago. Almost as good as zoom.

I am looking at containerized ways to run zoom to restrict its access to my system, but it is the best IMO, by far.

[edit] I should note that I've also used Viber a bit. Less now though. Mostly for calling home from overseas. Not great for conferencing though.

fiftyfifty• 6 years ago

Teams is way better than Skype, provided everyone is on a computer.

basilgohar• 6 years ago

Zoom also has a good Linux client. It's been the least frictive option amongst the well-known conferencing apps with clients for me.

jbuscher• 6 years ago

Honestly UberConference works way better...

thoraway101011• 6 years ago

Absolutely not! We pay for both. Uberconference has higher latency (test with a click track inside your office with two phones on a call).

Contention on uberconference is MUCH worse when two people are speaking. You get that weird halting sorry I spoke on top of you effect.

angrygoat• 6 years ago

Another pretty great thing with Zoom is that it'll keep a call up even if, say, your home internet drops out and you switch to tethering on your phone. It sounds rare, but with Australian internet or dodgy campus wifi, this is a really useful feature.

xenonite6• 6 years ago

Well I think this a standard feature of conference call software, you can quit and re-join at any time.

Yizahi• 6 years ago

Yes we transitioned from Webex + Lync + Skype + Cisco phones to just Zoom and it is amazing (aside from privacy breaches of course). Conferencing is a pain and Zoom solves a lot of existing issue in that area so companies recognize this, especially when people in change also use conference software :) .

ThePowerOfFuet7• 6 years ago

One that has been a total game changer for my company is when I'm hosting a conference call, I can simply "Invite by Phone" my participants. They get a phone call, are prompted to "Press 1 to enter the conference", and boom they're in. It's drastically reduced people fumbling around with phone numbers + participant codes, ending up in the wrong meeting, or getting stuck in some unnecessary software install loop. If someone is more than two minutes late, they're getting a phone call that brings them instantly into the meeting.

Why on earth are people needing to make POTS phone calls to join a meeting? Not only is the audio of vastly inferior quality, the information isn't being kept secure AND they can't see anything being presented.

Instead, why not shoot them a link so they can just click it and be in the meeting? That's how it SHOULD work, but that's not how it DOES work with Zoom (unless you engage in tomfoolery to make like you're trying but failing to install the software, and only then do you get a link to join via browser — but then then you get a deliberately-crippled experience because fuck you).

andrepd4• 6 years ago

One that has been a total game changer for my company is when I'm hosting a conference call, I can simply "Invite by Phone" my participants. They get a phone call, are prompted to "Press 1 to enter the conference", and boom they're in.

Jitsi Meet has this feature

dang2• 6 years ago

(This subthread was originally in reply to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22703219)

ryeguy_243• 6 years ago

I get that privacy is important but this company has become a household name over night. My mom literally just installed Zoom because her friends were talking about it (eyeroll). The company has obviously helped the global economy work remotely and keep productivity moving over the past few months. First, thank you to Zoom for making a great product and continue to work under ridiculous load. Secondly, I agree that privacy is an issue but can we tone it down a bit considering the global situation at stake.

What am I missing? I'm asking humbly. Because it seems like we are complaining about the food at a homeless shelter?

himaraya• 6 years ago

1. Paid service 2. Privacy is important.

catalogia2• 6 years ago

I agree that privacy is an issue but can we tone it down a bit considering the global situation at stake.

It seems to me that this is the best possible time to make some noise about Zoom's privacy problems. What better time for that could there be than during a period of mass adoption? What better opportunity to shame a company into compliance than during a global pandemic when the responsibilities of companies to the community is being emphasized?

You might have a point if castigating Zoom for spying on users somehow facilitated the spread of corona, but it doesn't.

exolymph• 6 years ago

At what time would it be acceptable to critique Zoom's surveillance practices, in your view? We're not allowed to complain when a useful tool also spies on us?

ryeguy_243• 6 years ago

Not criticizing the timing. Criticizing the tone. My rule in life is politely ask first, if no response then by all means, bring the wrath. Does anyone know if they've ignored the concern?

Everybody assumes every company is a villain these days. Maybe this was an overlooking and they'll happily fix? Anybody ever think of that?

pearjuice• 6 years ago

Did you know they also make a public address book in your entire organization of people on zoom? You can't easily opt out of this. I'm currently contracted at a govt organization which other than mundane conference calls you have to reserve a spot for by email (which nobody does because it's not 1998) doesn't have any remote video/audio infrastructure so basically each team is doing their own thing. Some use zoom, others discord and so forth. A lot of teams started to use zoom and they sign up with their @xyz.gov e-mail. Literally everyone is then public to everyone on @xyz.gov and whether they're currently in a call.

Everyone is still on the free plan and reconnecting after 40 minutes (it's basically standard procedure when the 10 minute countdown starts to rejoin). I bet it won't take long before zoom sales get in touch and you think the person going to approve the tailor-made $$$ contract cares about privacy? Or the 700 people already using it except for a small minority who don't have any influence in this kind of decision making?

skrebbel• 6 years ago

Is Zoom-dissing just in fashion these days? In the last few days I've seen these on HN:

- Having the Facebook SDK installed in their iOS app, which sends user data to Facebook even if the user has no Facebook account

- Having a setting, that's off by default, that lets other callers see whether you have the Zoom app in focus

- Having a general "accessibility over security" engineering attitude, which led them to eg shipping their desktop apps with a builtin HTTP server (and with it a much bigger security surface area), just to skip one extra step in the join-meeting-via-a-zoom-link-flow. They removed it after a backlash, but the engineering attitude probably didn't change.

Now, I agree that all of these are bad. It's OK for outrage to happen over these things, every single one of them are shit and major companies like Zoom need to get their act together.

But I also think that many apps out there do stuff like this. The majority of popular apps, I'd wager. Why is Zoom being singled out? First Vice, now a Harvard blog, a bunch of unsubstantiated tweet storms.. Is it just, en vogue to diss Zoom somehow?

catalogia2• 6 years ago

Why is Zoom being singled out?

There is no conspiracy here, calm down. Zoom is popular, therefore people talk about it.

kwesthaus• 6 years ago

You are right that many pieces of software infringe on privacy. However, Zoom only recently has become one of the most widespread of these and because of that has only recently begun to affect a significant portion of the population, hence why it is newsworthy.

I think this also has to do with the fact that Zoom is being used for work and school and therefore people have less choice over their use of it. It's not a social network that many people have chosen to start using, it's a piece of software that millions of students and other people are being required to use without consideration of privacy.

wintermutestwin• 6 years ago

Use case: Mediation

Zoom is the only easy to use videoconferencing tool I have found that can do breakout rooms. Mediation is, by law, a confidential process.

From the ConsumerReports article: "Videos aren't off-limits, according to the document, and neither are transcripts that can be generated automatically, the documents you share on your screen, or the names of everyone on a call."

In recommending that my clients use Zoom, am I violating my ethical and legal requirements? Is Zoom breaking the law?

nsmog767• 6 years ago

Of all things, lack of trust and transparency from a video platform is pretty scary. Hard to justify using Zoom any longer. Lifesize is a good alternative that a lot of people don't know about (I have no stake in them, but have used it before).

kitotik• 6 years ago

Clearly they don’t “need” to do a thing. They were already gaining a ton of market share before COVID19, and this has only cemented their position.

The people who are concerned about privacy aren’t really the ones writing them big checks anyway.

oblivionreb• 6 years ago

It's a necessary evil for many of us students. Institutions just aren't willing to deal with compatibility/pricing issues with such short notice. Zoom found its niche as a bootstrap crisis averter, I guess

blntechie• 6 years ago

Zoom have had several controversies with its privacy now and still going strong . Great staying power like Facebook.

The product must be really good. I have never used them more than in couple occasions and found it like any other web conferencing tool in my opinion.

alfalfasprout• 6 years ago

Truth is, it has the best video quality I've seen out of any of the video conferencing tools out there by a mile. Only Facetime comes close and it's limited to apple hardware and has more limited screen collaboration tools.

As a result, they're going to have staying power.

unlinked_dll2• 6 years ago

Maybe I'm biased but video quality doesn't really bother me nearly as much as audio quality, and Zoom kinda sucks there. Part of it is the codec, but their AEC is so godawful we have to force everyone on calls to use headphones.

Video quality is really only necessary when screen sharing, and zoom does OK there.

quickthrower25• 6 years ago

Can’t tell the difference between zoom and slack in terms of video quality. Both are perfect.

st3fan• 6 years ago

Where is the Zoom CEO in this thread?

gruglife• 6 years ago

I have the feeling that outside of the HN community and other tech communities, most people just don't care about this, which is sad.

guptaneil• 6 years ago

If anybody else is wondering about alternatives, DHH sourced some ethical options in this Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1243248363979419649?s=21

Of those, I tried whereby.com yesterday and was blown away. It just works with zero downloads in any browser, including mobile, and is very high quality. From my brief usage, I highly recommend it for small teams.

AndyPa32• 6 years ago

The paid version has a feature where the organization admins can listen and watch in conversations without anybody noticing or giving consent. I am quite sure that doing so would be illegal where I live (Germany).

cheeze• 6 years ago

That's creeeeeeepy.

ShakataGaNai2• 6 years ago

Unless you gave "consent" in your employment contract, or agreement to the companies employee handbook, AUP or similar documentation. This sort of "agreement to monitoring" is common in a lot of corporations today.

Please don't use your company issued hardware/software/network for something not-work related ... and something you wouldn't feel comfortable sharing with most of your colleagues. There is already a plethora of monitoring going on out there.

rrix2• 6 years ago

Except this person doesnt seem to have been able to give informed consent, which is what German Law is actually looking for. European employment law is much more on the side of employees than in the US, where your comment's nihilism would make me guess you're located... Most GDPR infractions given have been around this exact sort of noncensensual recording and I think the GP comment should be contacting their data protection office or seeking guidance from their company CPO.

decebalus1• 6 years ago

Not a lawyer, but being a Washington resident (see WA wiretapping laws) interviewing over Zoom (thus not working for that company and no having signed any forms/NDAs/waivers) I'm pretty sure someone snooping in or recording the interview without my consent is illegal.

jes5199• 6 years ago

This blame-the-victim mentality is not helpful. An employee shouldn't have to be vigilant against their bosses spying on them! Basic human norms don't disappear just because there's fine print in a contract. The idea that "ownership" of hardware gives certain people in a company unchecked power over the people who use that hardware is obscene.

Androider• 6 years ago

I don't think that's true, source? At least I've never seen that as an Enterprise admin.

Based on some quick googling, are you perhaps mistaking Zoom the video conf software with the confusingly similarly named ZOOM International, which does call-center / agent software but is a completely unrelated and a much older company?

zndr5• 6 years ago

Zoom Admin here:

An admin, from a dashboard, can see all meetings currently running. If you "click" into one of those meetings for more details, you can also join the meeting as essentially a cohost, you cannot join invisibly.

You CAN see any meeting title, guests, duration, call quality, IP addresses of attendees, Geolocation of that IP, network ti Mic, Speaker and camera in use, and some other stuff.

YOU CAN see all recordings after the fact that are cloud-hosted, Zoom offers 2 recording types based on where you're recording from, laptops like Mac and PC with min spec can record locally, or in the cloud, everything else is in the cloud. I also do not know and do not believe, there is an audit log for this. This is actually the most troubling thing.

You can see more here https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/204654719-Getting-...

Also, unlike say Google Hangouts Meet, you cannot add a room to a meeting without consent. Meet allows you to force ANY room into any meeting you want (defaulting with camera and sound on). I've seen people who have these set up in their homes and think of how bad it can be.

EDIT-

Also while no one at my org uses it, I believe you can easily see all zoom chat history.

graphememes• 6 years ago

Citation required, cannot find this in the feature list, support documentation, or on the pricing page.

xenonite6• 6 years ago

If you are looking for a source of these claims, let me give you one: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/what-you-should-know-a...

Administrators also have the ability to join any call at any time on their organization’s instance of Zoom, without in-the-moment consent or warning for the attendees of the call.

dannytatom• 6 years ago

that doesn't mention the `without noticing` part, which is the creepy not good part. sounds like it's just saying the administrators get a list of currently running meetings and can join them if they want without being invited. doesn't say they're hidden or anything.

femmelibre• 6 years ago

The case of #poorjennifer calls for major concerns. Every woman should feel safe using Zoom for work, never worry about privacy violation, such as manager videotaping her without her consent, then saving recordings in zoom cloud without her knowledge. Zoom videotaping goes against Privacy Law in California. Consent is diligently required.

CoffeeDregs• 6 years ago

Title is sort of incorrect: "Zoom needs to clean up its privacy act" should be "Zoom needs not to do stupid shit"...

I'm a fan of the product but this is ridiculous behavior (great Linux support). I have a hard time imagining the product meeting in which "Yes. That's a good idea. Let's do it." was said. I get that FB is big, that Zoom wants the credibility, etc but that's a sign that management is not thinking clearly about their product and should be a red flag to any investor (among the many green flags from current demand)...

thoraway101011• 6 years ago

You realize investors are laughing their way to the bank because of the ease of use focus of zoom? The investors in the fully encrypted privacy based video conferencing platforms (yes, they exist) are broke now.

avmich• 6 years ago

Zoom has an extremely valuable service, which it performs very well—better than anybody else, apparently.

Objection - best advertised (or should I say "best" advertised) doesn't equal best. I'd be truly surprised if somebody actually presented convincing arguments that Zoom service is better than anybody else.

bluntfang• 6 years ago

harvard needs to pay their food service workers

zekrioca• 6 years ago

Does any one have any knowledge at how Zoom is architected? I know they own some datacenters, but so does Microsoft, which has a worse service than Zoom.

bennofs2• 6 years ago

An overview is given in their blog post: https://blog.zoom.us/wordpress/2019/06/26/zoom-can-provide-i...

However, I would also like to know if there's more to it. Do they do any server side transcoding? Do they get an advantage by having multiple backend servers connected through good links, having clients connected to the nearest one and routing efficiently through their network? It appears that they use(d) H264 as their codec, are there some technical tricks they use to cope with variable bandwidth (do they use scalable video coding or simulcast)?

wyoh• 6 years ago

Can someone explain the advantages of Zoom over a FOSS solution lake Jitsi Meet? https://meet.jit.si/

nhf• 6 years ago

Institutional buy-in and support. When your 40,000 student university's administration declares "we are using Zoom for online classes and it's been integrated into our class management system by IT", it just gets used.

And that university chooses to use Zoom over another solution for many reason - after-sales support, SLAs for performance and availability, pre-written API integrations for their CMS and student ID system, guarantees from their sales team about regulatory compliance, and the like.

sloshnmosh• 6 years ago

I am very curious about Zoom’s desktop version as I have seen it used for sensitive telemedicine sessions between doctors and court ordered patients. I think Facebook’s response was disgraceful, putting the onus and blame on the developer after FB developed a plug-in which is no different than malware.

james_niro• 6 years ago

I am using zoom for school with 300 students and it works great. My professors who are not tech savvy were able to use it without problem. Zoom makes recording, screen sharing and chatting much easier than other softwares. Also, I like how easy it is to call in.

Also, at my work we use zoom for everything. It is a powerful software that we love.

frabbit2• 6 years ago

Are there any advantages to Zoom over Jitsi Meet? For most people's use case (a small group of family friends) the simplicity and quality of the Jitsi Meet setup is incredible.

eagsalazar2• 6 years ago

This post inspired me to actually try out Jitsi but was put off by their request for access to my Youtube profile when the prompt was "connect your google calendar". WTF?

Anyone know what that permission is even about?

hanoz• 6 years ago

As it's beginning to look like my days as a Zoom refusenik are numbered, what is the safest way to use it? Android, iOS, Chomebook, some form of virtualization or container?

bchociej5• 6 years ago

I run it, along with other sketchy garbage proprietary software for wook, in a QEMU VM. Or I just dial in and let people suffer through me being on a phone connection owing to their choice of software.

jjgreen• 6 years ago

On a disposable laptop on an isolated subnet. Then burn it after use.

conradev2• 6 years ago

As other people have stated in this thread everything in Zoom's privacy policy seems to indicate they are sending data to advertisers only as necessary to advertise their own products. They likely:

- Use the Facebook iOS SDK to measure conversions from app install ads

- Send a list of hashed email addresses to Facebook or other advertisers to do ad re-targeting

- Have Google Analytics on their websites to track where people are visiting their website from, i.e. a click on a Google AdWords ad

While these are all not _ideal_ because _yes_, Google and Facebook use this data for their own purposes as well, it's far from _nefarious_. In fact, it's pretty standard fare. Could Zoom go above and beyond and reject these tools? Yes, they could. Does anyone in practice? No.

If Zoom was selling metadata about their calls, leaking contents of their calls, or themselves served ads – then yes, I'd be concerned. But all indications point to them purchasing ads to further the growth of their business.

I think it is perfectly reasonable to seek guarantees around the usage of the above, more sensitive data (contents of video calls, metadata of video calls, etc.) but on the flip side to imply from their privacy policy that they are sending it to Facebook or that they are "in the advertising business" is jumping the gun a little bit.

uoaei• 6 years ago

standard fare

Aka "common sense" aka "anything that will fit within the Overton window"

Not to be confused with "decent, moral behavior"

Spivak3• 6 years ago

I suppose, but why would you single out Zoom and expect them to act more decent and morally than any other company? Is there any reason you would expect this?

m463• 6 years ago

The Overton window - fascinating.

I'm waiting for these conferencing apps to feed into clearview ai.

zndr5• 6 years ago

The other thing that's important is the privacy policy includes their marketing site You can see a clear list of tools that zoom uses on their Content Management System (CMS) aka Zoom.us here: https://builtwith.com/zoom.us

fapi1974• 6 years ago

This is the most levelheaded comment I've see in this thread. Not least because I have literally never seen an ad run on either the Zoom website or the app. Moreover, Zoom is one of the most successful SaaS companies in the world because their unit economics on their basic business model (of selling premium subsriptions) is literally better than almost any other SaaS company out there: https://tomtunguz.com/benchmarking-zoom-s-s-1-how-7-key-metr...

xenonite6• 6 years ago

One key driver of profitability is labor-market arbitrage. Nearly one third of Zoom’s team, and the majority of its engineering team is based in China. The result is the company spends less than 10% of its revenue on R&D, which is less than half the median of the peer set.

phyzome2• 6 years ago

If their Privacy Policy doesn't say they won't sell or distribute call metadata or contents, I have to assume they will. If they want to update their Privacy Policy to make that clearer, I would encourage that.

(And hashed email addresses? Might as well just send the email addresses. Hashing is kind of useless there.)

conradev2• 6 years ago

Yeah, I hope that the outcome of all of this negative attention is that Zoom publishes those guarantees. What’d be even better, though, is if they enforce them with tech – WhatsApp and FaceTime both offer end to end encrypted group calling.

Hashed contact info is just how Facebook intakes contact information. Makes it harder for them to get the info of non-Facebook users who are patrons of the business. They claim to delete it: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/112061095610075?id=24...

chance_state• 6 years ago

Gotta love when HN users go out of their way to apologize for disgusting and immortal behavior by tech companies. I'd expect nothing less.

krageon2• 6 years ago

Why would it be jumping the gun? They can, so they will. It's been like this with every US company that has been looked at in this way.

shaan1• 6 years ago

Think twice before using Zoom. They have a lot of engineers in China developing the core technology. You would be foolish to conduct meetings and share sensitive docs over zoom. Communist party is listening to everything.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/26/zoom-key-profit-driver-ahead...

madwhitehatter5• 6 years ago

Zoom was developed in China

Look at the top of page 21 of their sec submission. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1585521/000119312519...

afrcnc• 6 years ago

I think people are missing the fact that ZOOM doesn't actually clean up its act. It has lots to profit from selling user data.

chias• 6 years ago

I thought this was going to be about their hilarious CSP, which whitelists the following domains:

    'unsafe-eval'
    'unsafe-inline'
    blob:
    https://*.50million.club
    https://*.adroll.com
    https://*.cloudfront.net
    https://*.google.com
    https://*.hotjar.com
    https://*.zoom.us
    https://*.zoomus.cn
    https://*.zopim.com
    https://ad.lkqd.net
    https://ajax.aspnetcdn.com
    https://apiurl.org
    https://appsforoffice.microsoft.com
    https://assets.zendesk.com
    https://bat.bing.com
    https://cdn.5bong.com
    https://cdn.jsdelivr.net
    https://cdncache-a.akamaihd.net
    https://code.jquery.com
    https://connect.facebook.net
    https://consent.trustarc.com
    https://extnetcool.com
    https://fp166.digitaloptout.com
    https://googleads.g.doubleclick.net
    https://intljs.rmtag.com
    https://pi.pardot.com
    https://px.ads.linkedin.com
    https://ruanshi2.8686c.com
    https://rum-static.pingdom.net
    https://s.dcbap.com
    https://s.yimg.com
    https://s.ytimg.com
    https://s3.amazonaws.com
    https://scout-cdn.salesloft.com
    https://sealserver.trustwave.com
    https://secure-cdn.mplxtms.com
    https://secure.myshopcouponmac.com
    https://snap.licdn.com
    https://sp.analytics.yahoo.com
    https://srvvtrk.com
    https://static.zdassets.com
    https://static2.sharepointonline.com
    https://tag.demandbase.com
    https://tpc.googlesyndication.com
    https://tracking.g2crowd.com
    https://translate.googleapis.com
    https://trk.techtarget.com
    https://unpkg.com
    https://www.comeet.co
    https://www.dropbox.com
    https://www.google-analytics.com
    https://www.googleadservices.com
    https://www.googletagmanager.com
    https://www.gstatic.com
    https://www.youtube.com
    https://d.adroll.mgr.consensu.org
    https://serve2.cheqzone.com
    https://static.ada.support
    'self'

via: https://twitter.com/jasvir/status/1242518507683639296

quickthrower25• 6 years ago

Yes unpkg and s3, anyone can get content up on them.

chandru2• 6 years ago

K-12 education uses zoom because it's HIPAA and FERPA compliant. My understanding is that Skype and Hangouts aren't.

tinyhouse• 6 years ago

Do Zoom have their own infrastructure or do they run on aws/azure/gcloud?

I think it's amazing how zoom became so popular recently. It's even been approved to be used for Passover Seder dinner by some Rabbis :)

It also very popular in academia and reminds me of Dropbox. When I was a student everyone around me used Dropbox. They developed a great product which competes with Google and other giants. But those were all unpaid users and eventually Dropbox moved their focus to Enterprise. Zoom will soon be in a similar situation.

Rafuino• 6 years ago

I had the same question... It looks like they use AWS, though this paper I found is dated May 2013...

https://d24cgw3uvb9a9h.cloudfront.net/static/40580/doc/Zoom-...

monadic2• 6 years ago

Too little, too late. Corporations cannot be trusted with software.

mrpippy4• 6 years ago

I just downloaded Zoom for Mac, saw that it was a .pkg file. Great, I can see what files it installs before I install it.

I open the .pkg, click Continue so it can run its script, then a second later Installer quits and the app launches. What?!

Turns out, Zoom installs the entire app in the 'preinstall' script of the installer package! Inside there's a copy of '7z', and the app is extracted with that. The preinstall script is littered with typos and poor grammar.

I'm not one of those people who thinks that Apple is going to force all Mac software to come through the App Store, but when I see stuff this stupid...I start to wonder.

Wowfunhappy10• 6 years ago

While I also dislike this type of thing, remember that Zoom's business is built on getting people into calls as quickly as possible. Seconds matter.

So I can totally understand why they would want to use 7zip to shave kilobytes off the download size.

zndr5• 6 years ago

This is a great point. People understand installers/.pkg files far better than `.app`'s wrapped in a DMG. Those often get launched inside the DMG which has a ton of other issues, rather than being dragged to the Application folder.

Also packages allow for easier deployment rather than dmg's.

swiley• 6 years ago

7zip isn’t the complaint, it’s that the installer installs the app before the user OKs it.

Honestly zoom is something that I would never let near a personal computer. What really surprised me is that there’s a “zoomgov.” (a friend at a defense contractor showed me) Either our government is enjoying the benefits of being able to force companies to be audited because of defense budgets or things have become way more relaxed than they should be. Judging by our “stockpiles” and inability to get critical equipment I’m guessing the second one.

donarb• 6 years ago

Seconds matter.

Whenever I have been told that I have a meeting coming up with some kind of conferencing software that I don't have installed, I immediately install it. I don't wait until 3 minutes before the call to try and install. All kinds of things could happen, such as incompatibilities or missing passcodes.

pfranz8• 6 years ago

I feel like Zoom has a history of doing shady things under the vail of "ease of use" (referring to the uninstall complaints a few months ago).

I do think on macOS the average user doesn't understand DMG files, run apps from inside the DMG instead of copying them to /Applications and deleting the disk image. My guess is that most people install Zoom after a meeting has started and this was the quickest, fewest dialog method of getting it up and running.

ThePowerOfFuet7• 6 years ago

Stop apologizing for them. It's literally two more clicks, and anyone who has gone through the flow expects those clicks. Also, if Installer never realizes it installed something, it won't even offer to delete the installer .pkg.

ratww• 6 years ago

run apps from inside the DMG instead of copying them to /Applications and deleting the disk image

First, there's nothing wrong with that.

Also, some apps display a message asking to be moved to /Applications when launched from a DMG.

ThePowerOfFuet7• 6 years ago

Next time, open the .pkg with Pacifier.

enjoyyourlife• 6 years ago

I think you mean Pacifist (https://www.charlessoft.com/) which you can use to extract the app directly

mrpippy4• 6 years ago

Since this .pkg completely subverts how packages are supposed to work, none of the files show up in Pacifist. Everything is in 'Scripts', which is a .cpio.gz.

kccqzy2• 6 years ago

This is exactly what creeped me out when I first installed Zoom years ago.

Very few people cared when I commented this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20398084

Suffice it to say, I no longer trust Zoom to be running in my regular user account. I have a separate user on my Mac to isolate it. If you have the means, you might even consider a spare computer or a VM to run Zoom.

diebeforei485• 6 years ago

I use my iPad for Zoom. One of the few times I'm glad the App Store and sandbox exist.

Even their iOS/iPadOS app is annoying, because the first time you open it and sign in, it pops 3 (!) permission dialogs (Calendar, Notifications, and TouchID/FaceID). Way too aggressive IMO.

Now, if only they'd make a Mac App Store version of Zoom. I'd be so happy...

mrpippy4• 6 years ago

Man, it's disappointing to hear this has stayed the same for so long. In the future, Apple should sandbox 'preflight' to disallow writing files, and then enforce it as a condition of notarization.

mrpippy4• 6 years ago

More details from @c1truz_ on Twitter: https://twitter.com/c1truz_/status/1244737672930824193

jimmobo2• 6 years ago

I read this like 10 minutes after installing Zoom on my Mac. Yikes. Anyone have a list of files and processes I can tweeze out (beyond the obvious files, which I've already purged)?

jimmobo2• 6 years ago

Here's the answer: https://gist.github.com/al45tair/73be245ab87a66a885742b98be9...

jb3689• 6 years ago

Zoom should really come out with a public statement (does one exist?). They've been called out a number of times over the past week or few and I think it would be wise for them to clear up any misconceptions (or hide in a turtle shell if they are clearly screwed either way)

shd44• 6 years ago

Zoom needs to fuck off. This is apologism. We need open source and decentralized solution and we need to shut up. I'm tired of this.

tomstockmail• 6 years ago

I've been using Jitsi Meet

https://jitsi.org/jitsi-meet/

shd44• 6 years ago

Thx! Heard about it already. I'll do a personal analysis and I'll report.

shd44• 6 years ago

Their branding sucks. Their website / landing page sucks. Their UX / UI sucks. I like the technology behind it though. I'll try to contact someone to see whether I can work for them (with them) for free, or as a volunteer (UI / UX / Web & Product Designer). They deserve better. There's a chance!

shd44• 6 years ago

Oh yea, I know that there are technical difficulties considering the decentralization. But why aren't we working on it now? Dunno what we're waiting for. Mass adoption?

tobyhede• 6 years ago

If your answer to a privacy concern is "use a Google product" you may not quite understand Google's business model.

Zoom is as good as video can be in 2020. Google may be on parity, but tools like WebX are laughably inferior.

luminati• 6 years ago

Honest question [not trying to act controversial], especially with all the US-China spat.

Zoom's engineering team is based in China - the product is primarily built out of there. [1]

What guarantee is there that the CCP is not intercepting/backdooring all video communications? Especially in current situations, where so much sensitive information is being discussed via Zoom?

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/26/zoom-key-profit-driver-ahead...

systemvoltage4• 6 years ago

I've said this time and again only to get downvotes since there is no proof or substantiation about the CCP surveillance claims. But, it is an important to keep in mind. There are things that I cannot say due to our employment contract and NDA, but to say the least, we are looking into this matter.

Surveillance prospects, doesn't matter where they originate - US or China or Country X - need to be discussed and examined. But apparently, saying anything against China on HN is an automatic ban for creating a flame war. We've become too soft. Obviously personal attacks and racism is not tolerable. But, I would personally (some may disagree) say that we should also criticize bad parts of culture too...that's for another day or a different forum.

Can we just get past the my country your country bullshit on HN and talk about privacy implications especially from the world's largest surveillance network? It is one thing to be spied upon for advertisement tracking, an entirely another to be spied upon by a brutal authoritarian government. Fearlessly criticizing CCP or the NSA, or Israeli intelligence agency or whatever... should be one of the most important things to talk about on "Hacker" news forum.

I am gonna fire off some anon emails to WSJ/NYTimes/WaPo/Guardian to create some awareness and perhaps they can dig further into Chinese influence in using Zoom. I am deeply concerned. The entire world has given up video/audio/screen/application privacy in a snap... for the data might be stored in Tianjin datacenter, needless to say whose keys are in the hands of CCP - I guarantee that but cannot provide proof.

Edit: past comments that were downvoted (and flagged): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22657794

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22684767

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22663295

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22705960

warent• 6 years ago

I made a comment a few weeks ago criticizing the Chinese government[1]. No flame war came of it, it wasn't flagged, downvoted to oblivion, or result in an "automatic ban." I'm not sure what you're saying to cause those things to happen, but it doesn't seem to be what you think it is.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22490791

lsh• 6 years ago

I have noticed there has been a lot more downvoting here recently, really innocuous and innocent things as well. It might just be more traffic or a different type of traffic to the site while everybody is staying home.

And while I agree with your sentiment regarding the CCP, the comments you link lack the meat of the one you just posted. I'm not surprised they got a kicking.

I am gonna fire off some anon emails to WSJ/NYTimes/WaPo/Guardian to create some awareness

Well done.

corndoge• 6 years ago

There are things that I cannot say due to our employment contract and NDA, but to say the least, we are looking into this matter.

Who is "we"?

kortilla• 6 years ago

Not much. In particular, the fact that you sign up for accounts under company emails makes it much easier for them to selectively target based on which users look the juiciest. Even if the backdoor isn’t in the public code, it’s trivial to put in logic to have clients receive a different update when signed in with an account marked as “VIP” or whatever.

tly_alex2• 6 years ago

Zoom as a legal entity is a US company, headquartered in San Jose, California. So US law should apply.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoom_Video_Communications

cutemonster2• 6 years ago

For what reasons would spy organisations in other countries care about the laws in California or the US and following them?

kccqzy2• 6 years ago

I really hate to mention this, but this perhaps answered an question of mine about why quality of code in Zoom is so low.

When I installed Zoom for Mac for the first time, I noticed it took a while to start up and caused beachballing. So I grabbed a sample of the process via Activity Monitor. To my utter horror, the Zoom binary is shelling out by calling system(3) on the fucking main thread.

I just verified this is the case on the latest version of Zoom for Mac. The binary zoom.us.app/Contents/Frameworks/zmLoader.bundle/Contents/MacOS/zmLoader invokes system(3) on three separate occasions in two functions: -[ZPMBSystemHelper disablePTAutoRestoreWindow] and -[ZPMBSystemHelper disableConfAutoRestoreWindow].

And looking at what the string was, it's just a fucking call to defaults(1). Now I'm not a Mac programming expert but I cannot understand why Zoom needs to change its own preference settings this way. This just screams sloppy software engineering quality. I guess this is what you get when you outsource software engineering.

I would not be surprised at all if someone reports vulnerabilities in Zoom, whether deliberate or accidental.

phn• 6 years ago

I don't know about code quality, and I'm not ruling out privacy or security issues, but zoom must be doing something very right -- their rise to popularity regardless of there being plenty of free (!) alternatives has to come from somewhere.

It may be just anecdotal but their calls work flawlessly, regardless of number of participants, where other apps are just a laggy mess. So yes, their apps are just a means to an end and may be rushed and "low quality", but oh boy do they deliver.

saagarjha8• 6 years ago

Aaaaaaahhhh this is just so horrible. There is specific in-process C and Objective-C API for this. Someone should look at this app. Maybe I will if I finish up what I’m doing.

eternalny1• 6 years ago

Of course the CCP can intercept those videos, Snowden's book talked about how the NSA is doing what they are doing specifically because China was doing it.

It's not specific to Zoom, they intercept at the global fiber lines, they can watch ANY video they want.

So yes, the CCP can watch your videos and so can the NSA.

quocble2• 6 years ago

Wow, hackernews is a cesspool of self-serving "intellectuals". We're in the middle of a pandemic, which already killed 27 thousands people. And the #1 post is privacy act? Can't you guys admit that you didn't come up with video calling company worth 37 Billion dollars. Maybe it's worth talking the positive impact on Zoom during this crisis.

FridgeSeal• 6 years ago

“This company is doing incredibly shady things and exploiting its sudden boost in popularity, so you guys shouldn’t criticise it, because it’s made soooo much money and you didn’t and it’s therefore above criticism “

That’s how your comment reads. The fact that it’s worth so much is almost completely irrelevant, and if anything, should mean they have more responsibility to do the right thing.

quocble2• 6 years ago

It's a matter priority.

If it's a real problem, go sue them. Do you need a Havard op ed to tell you?

ddrt• 6 years ago

Coincidentally NextDNS blocked my use of the Harvard site for bad ad tracking. Hmmm.

gbrown• 6 years ago

One thing I've noticed about it which rubs me the wrong way is that, on Linux, when I exit the application it keeps running in the background. There's no reason that it advertises why this should be necessary, and I don't see any option to disable it. I shouldn't have to manually kill the process to exit a program.

ntnsndr• 6 years ago

I agree this is annoying, but you can always Exit the program from the icon in the menubar (works for me on both GNOME and xfce).

liquidify• 6 years ago

For a piece of software that initially made claims to having encryption and privacy concerns, yes, yes they do.

quantified2• 6 years ago

Note also at least the unwanted/unnecessary facebook connection: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/k7e599/zoom-ios-app-sends...

EastSmith• 6 years ago

I've been using zoom for more than a three years now, and I want to know if Zoom is providing transcripts of private 1 on 1 conversations to the room owner.

Just to clarify - the zoom room is not mine. We are using it across a group of like 10, for a group meetings - sometimes all of us, sometimes subgroups, sometimes one on one.

I can not imagine a world where a company would do that, but given the recent events, I am not ruling out this level of creepines.

Zoom?

tomc1985• 6 years ago

Where did Zoom suddenly come from? I never even heard of it until this quarantine stuff, then all of the sudden everyone is talking about videochat on Zoom.

It's like WTF, another contender for this throne? Sigh.

mehrdadn• 6 years ago

Zoom Removes Code That Sends Data to Facebook: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22708233

ChicagoDave• 6 years ago

I experienced the switch from Webex to Zoom in a corporate office environment and being able to see your meeting on the iPad and clicking start is a huge win. And if you’re in any room you can just connect because it knows where you are.

Webex addresses are stupid by comparison.

I don’t like this Facebook crap but otherwise Zoom is pretty slick.

astatine• 6 years ago

We have been using Zoom four 4 years now. And it has simplified conferences enormously. Sometimes a few of our customers insist on using their own corporate mandated systems. Half of these times there is a struggle to get the meeting going for one reason or the other. We offer to set up a zoom call and, quite literally, the call is back on track within 2 minutes. Regardless of which country the user is in, the device being used, or any other parameter which somehow seems to trip up all the other systems regularly.

I have used Skype, webex, hangout meet, gotomeeting, various other entirely web based ones and none come close to the reliability that Zoom provides. No wonder it's getting adopted like crazy.

Kudos to them for handling this traffic with absolutely no visible hiccups.

ChrisMarshallNY2• 6 years ago

Probably ninja'd, but it looks like Zoom cleared this up:

https://www.vice.com/en_au/article/z3b745/zoom-removes-code-...

Zoom needs to clean up its privacy act

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