←back to thread

Zoom needs to clean up its privacy act

(blogs.harvard.edu)
1597 points seapunk | 2 comments | 27 Mar 20 14:18 UTC | HN request time: 0.47s | source
Show context
mikestew ◴[27 Mar 20 14:46 UTC] No.22703219[source]▶
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.

replies(29): >>22703265 #>>22703271 #>>22703364 #>>22703382 #>>22703404 #>>22703580 #>>22703612 #>>22703697 #>>22703733 #>>22703760 #>>22703778 #>>22703833 #>>22704080 #>>22704128 #>>22704400 #>>22704642 #>>22704814 #>>22705137 #>>22705220 #>>22705347 #>>22705917 #>>22706107 #>>22706304 #>>22706493 #>>22707187 #>>22707586 #>>22708730 #>>22708818 #>>22709124 #
1. ChrisMarshallNY ◴[27 Mar 20 15:25 UTC] No.22703612[source]▶
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.

replies(1): >>22704738 #
2. vosper ◴[27 Mar 20 17:15 UTC] No.22704738[source]▶
> 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.