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Zoom needs to clean up its privacy act

(blogs.harvard.edu)
1597 points seapunk | 5 comments | 27 Mar 20 14:18 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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coder1001 ◴[27 Mar 20 14:47 UTC] No.22703220[source]▶
"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?

replies(5): >>22703245 #>>22703281 #>>22703614 #>>22703626 #>>22703952 #
jamra ◴[27 Mar 20 14:49 UTC] No.22703245[source]▶
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
replies(2): >>22703354 #>>22703536 #
1. fsh ◴[27 Mar 20 15:01 UTC] No.22703354[source]▶
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.
replies(1): >>22703492 #
2. ryeguy_24 ◴[27 Mar 20 15:15 UTC] No.22703492[source]▶
Why doesn't it scale? Because for n participants, each would need n-1 connections?
replies(1): >>22703726 #
3. fsh ◴[27 Mar 20 15:33 UTC] No.22703726[source]▶
Each client has to send n-1 streams and domestic connections usually have quite weak uplink.
replies(1): >>22705362 #
4. jessaustin ◴[27 Mar 20 18:23 UTC] No.22705362{3}[source]▶
ISTM there could be some opportunities here? First, not everyone is talking at once (else this is a riot rather than a conference), so many of the uplinks could be "nothing new" packets for much of the time. Second, if any participant(s) (even a dummy participant) has faster uplink, that/those client(s) could forward to the rest of the group, in a fashion somewhat analogous to torrent.
replies(1): >>22707021 #
5. jamra ◴[27 Mar 20 21:22 UTC] No.22707021{4}[source]▶
You could also do leader election and make that one leader be the sink. Then broadcast to everyone else. However, I'm gonna keep my trap shut because I don't want to get downvoted by this elite squad of video professionals.