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Zoom needs to clean up its privacy act

(blogs.harvard.edu)
1597 points seapunk | 16 comments | 27 Mar 20 14:18 UTC | HN request time: 1.338s | source | bottom
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Tokkemon ◴[27 Mar 20 14:46 UTC] No.22703216[source]▶
Is Zoom the best though? Google Hangouts seems to be just as good.
replies(10): >>22703260 #>>22703263 #>>22703267 #>>22703285 #>>22703293 #>>22703294 #>>22703344 #>>22703764 #>>22704889 #>>22707034 #
1. thekyle ◴[27 Mar 20 14:52 UTC] No.22703267[source]▶
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.
replies(3): >>22703332 #>>22703380 #>>22704542 #
2. primity ◴[27 Mar 20 14:59 UTC] No.22703332[source]▶
Ah yes, in my case it doesn't agree with firefox at all. I have chrome installed pretty much for hangouts only.
replies(1): >>22704556 #
3. Wowfunhappy ◴[27 Mar 20 15:05 UTC] No.22703380[source]▶
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.
replies(2): >>22703476 #>>22704499 #
4. seanhunter ◴[27 Mar 20 15:14 UTC] No.22703476[source]▶
? I'm literally on a zoom conference in firefox with audio right now.
replies(3): >>22703628 #>>22703636 #>>22705067 #
5. Wowfunhappy ◴[27 Mar 20 15:26 UTC] No.22703628{3}[source]▶
...huh. When I was trying it yesterday, it told me I couldn't use my computer's microphone "in this browser" and would have to either download the app or join by phone. It did let me use my webcam though, which seemed a bit bizarre.
6. panpanna ◴[27 Mar 20 15:26 UTC] No.22703636{3}[source]▶
Tried it literally 2 hours ago. Didn't work, had to switch to chrome.

(Windows 10, if it matters. IIRC I had the same experience on linux)

replies(1): >>22704042 #
7. mattmcknight ◴[27 Mar 20 16:01 UTC] No.22704042{4}[source]▶
Download the client.
replies(1): >>22704106 #
8. likeclockwork ◴[27 Mar 20 16:09 UTC] No.22704106{5}[source]▶
No.
9. maxk42 ◴[27 Mar 20 16:50 UTC] No.22704499[source]▶
I've been using Firefox on Fedora for both Zoom and Hangouts for at least two years. No problems.

Slack, on the other hand, can go to hell.

replies(1): >>22705465 #
10. ThePowerOfFuet ◴[27 Mar 20 16:55 UTC] No.22704542[source]▶
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.
replies(1): >>22704855 #
11. ThePowerOfFuet ◴[27 Mar 20 16:57 UTC] No.22704556[source]▶
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.
12. thekyle ◴[27 Mar 20 17:27 UTC] No.22704855[source]▶
I just tried and it does seem to be working now.
13. saltcured ◴[27 Mar 20 17:50 UTC] No.22705067{3}[source]▶
Either they are A/B testing something new on you or you misunderstand what people mean by doing it in Firefox. They mean without any native client or browser extension being installed.

I haven't tried it this week, but that was the first thing I encountered when my university switched us to Zoom. I could join by browser in Firefox and see screenshare and video, but I would have had to also dial in to hear audio via phone. In chromium, I could get audio and video together. But, it is a more limited interface than the native client in terms of seeing attendee information. This week, I also tried chromium and saw severe audio quality issues. Joining the same meeting with the native client worked much better.

I understand that our university is consolidating and it apparently works for large lectures etc. For my own use, with small technical groups, we were happy with bluejeans before. It worked by Firefox using just webrtc functionality, AFAIK. What I've read is that Zoom is doing their own streaming and codecs, not using browser webrtc functions.

As an aside, I also encountered sudden SSO login problems in Zoom this week on Fedora. They seem to be defaulting to an embedded qt5-webengine browser and this was not working right at all. Editing their config zoomus.conf file to turn off the embedded SSO browser was the only way I could get logged in again.

replies(1): >>22705111 #
14. Wowfunhappy ◴[27 Mar 20 17:57 UTC] No.22705111{4}[source]▶
> or browser extension being installed. Did you just mention this as an example, or is there a browser extension that makes Zoom work in Firefox?

I think I'd prefer an extension to installing their client.

replies(1): >>22705770 #
15. Wowfunhappy ◴[27 Mar 20 18:33 UTC] No.22705465{3}[source]▶
And just to make sure, you're certain you haven't installed Zoom's client?

I'm very confused now, because there have been multiple comments in this thread both confirming it doesn't work in Firefox, and confirming that it does.

16. saltcured ◴[27 Mar 20 19:02 UTC] No.22705770{5}[source]▶
Not that I know of. There is (or was?) an extension to tighten the integration between the browser and native client, i.e. for use with calendar and email.