Zoom needs to clean up its privacy act

Because it's the right thing to do.

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

I don't think geography really changes the incentives.

It changes the culture. In my experience, Silicon Valley companies have more of a culture of growing at all costs. And they're either fanatical about privacy or they'll sell you out to the highest, middle, and lowest bidders all at once, then give it away free through an unpatched security hole too.

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.

Surely, though, there is a way for zoom to do both at the same time. That you and one of your sibling posts gives them some benefit of the doubt (or at least the appearance of it) is... sad.

I'm not sure where I gave the impression of being ok with what zoom is doing, but I'm not. I'm saying this is the expected course given the incentives we as a society have established for companies.

Hoping zoom and other companies prioritize the public good over profits is foolish, and the solution is to align profits with the public good.

It's because your response is the intellectual equivalent of throwing your hands in the air simply because you don't think you can have any contribution towards fixing the problem, and the only course of action forward is to simply describe why things are the way they are. It's complacent, and it's sad.

It's a lot like someone complaining about Trump being elected, and you respond with "Yeah, but we live in a Democracy". It's not a very helpful comment, and it doesn't get us anywhere except to keep us in the exact same place we are today.

>simply describe why things are the way they are. It's complacent, and it's sad.

>It's not a very helpful comment

I would think understanding the problem would be the first step to solving it. I'm not sitting here pretending I have all the answers. I saw an opportunity to shed some light on the situation so I commented. It seems weird to me that your critical of me for not contributing thoughts related directly to a solution, when you haven't contributed any thoughts about a solution either.

To each their own I suppose. But consider me thoroughly uninterested in discussing this further, which, seems to be what you wanted from me anyway.

I think assholes that want to make money at any cost are everywhere, in every city in every country in the world. Let’s not be naive. Maybe California gives birth to a higher number of big companies that are also famous and so is more visible.

They are, but they aren't that concentrated and networked and their attitude isn't that ingrained in the culture. You'll always have assholes, but if you have few non-assholes, it's a culture issue, not an asshole-issue.

Maybe sf is an asshole magnet rather than an asshole breeder. Without sf they’d go somewhere else after all “if I didn’t then someone else would” is the ethical excuse of the asshole.

Welp, I hope you use your understanding of the situation to start fixing it like you propose. Otherwise they're just words in the wind. Peace, friend

Let's not be naive, the VCs are in SV so the assholes flock there. 150 years ago they were named "carpetbaggers."