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    Zoom needs to clean up its privacy act

    (blogs.harvard.edu)
    1597 points seapunk | 14 comments | 27 Mar 20 14:18 UTC | HN request time: 1.195s | source | bottom
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    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.

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    impendia ◴[27 Mar 20 15:05 UTC] No.22703382[source]▶
    > 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/

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    1. chronofar ◴[27 Mar 20 19:51 UTC] No.22706184[source]▶
    > 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.

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    2. ummonk ◴[27 Mar 20 19:55 UTC] No.22706210[source]▶
    Most of them require you to create an account, often confirming an email in the process, which is a big barrier to setting it up. Accountless video conferencing is valuable if you don't have everyone at your company setup with Google or 365 accounts.
    3. privong ◴[27 Mar 20 20:03 UTC] No.22706290[source]▶
    > I think the real reason is "it's just what everyone else was doing."

    I can't speak for others. But for me, using Zoom is really because it worked better than everything else I'd tried (Skype, Google Hangouts, WebEx, rolling my own SIP server). That was parts: Linux software reliability (WebEx, Skype), limits on the number of people that could join meetings (Hangouts), and effort to talk my collaborators into installing new software (SIP+Jitsi). A bonus is that my employer had an institutional Zoom account. I've been happily using Zoom for 2-3 years now. I'm unhappy about these privacy issues that are being discovered/discussed now and I kinda feel like I should have looked into it. I'm sure there is a bandwagon effect happening, but there was also a real component of it working better than other solutions.

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    4. ramraj07 ◴[27 Mar 20 20:11 UTC] No.22706356[source]▶
    You have not set up video conferencing in academia then. Or have the WebEx or high-five meeting falter when a hundred people join. Zoom is definitely the most seamless video conferencing system out there, and there's a reason more and more corporations are switching over to them. It sucks that they're skeezy as well, but perhaps it's because they know they have the technical advantage
    5. NotSammyHagar ◴[27 Mar 20 20:48 UTC] No.22706735[source]▶
    I hear people talk about meetings not working for them. I can't understand the issue. I've used it for many years across groups that are small or large, personal, commerical, whatever, macs, all phones, linux, windows.

    At my new company they wanted to pay a license to use zoom. I asked why don't we just use meetings for free? The answer was it makes us look professional. That's where zoom is. There are dozens are alternatives.

    replies(1): >>22706822 #
    6. novok ◴[27 Mar 20 20:59 UTC] No.22706822{3}[source]▶
    I think zoom's secret sauce is meeting reliability and quality. You can consistently communicate without audio hiccups and other issues more vs others. Otherwise, why would zoom get so popular with the word of mouth of 'it just works'?

    What you're saying is basically a form of 'works on my machine'.

    replies(1): >>22706981 #
    7. behnamoh ◴[27 Mar 20 21:16 UTC] No.22706981{4}[source]▶
    Somehow Zoom has become the Facebook of videoconferencing services.

    Zoom, Facebook, Microsoft, and Google could all learn a thing or two from Apple with regard to privacy policy.

    replies(1): >>22707241 #
    8. karmelapple ◴[27 Mar 20 21:48 UTC] No.22707213[source]▶
    My anecdotal experience: Zoom's audio and video has consistently worked much better than any of the in-browser tools my team has tried.

    I'm sure part of this is due to it being a native app.

    Once a user is over the hiccup of "download and install this," being able to hop into a call immediately without much mucking about with audio and video settings seems consistently better with Zoom.

    9. madwhitehatter ◴[27 Mar 20 21:53 UTC] No.22707241{5}[source]▶
    They record and transcribe all calls why? Where do they store it? Why do they store it?
    10. freepor ◴[27 Mar 20 21:58 UTC] No.22707290[source]▶
    Not true in my experience. I have a remote cofounder and we do always-on video for hours a day so we systematically evaluated each option. The absolute best (resolution/framerate/latency) is FaceTime and the best cross-platform is Zoom.
    11. pfranz ◴[27 Mar 20 22:28 UTC] No.22707494[source]▶
    At my previous company there was no official VC app. Zoom was used the most across multiple years even after trying every other app often. Personally, I didn't like Skype because it seemed heavy and they kept making the things in the UI I liked more difficult to use. Google Meet wouldn't work in my default browser. Both required accounts to sign into a meeting.

    We were all over the world and using Mac/Win/Linux. So latency was high and bandwidth was often narrow. We also did company meetings every month or so. We pushed in a bunch of different directions. Often apps are only good at one or two of these scenarios, but Zoom was good enough at all of them.

    I had no clue until this week there was a web version, but after using all of the others I'm glad it heavily prefers a standalone app. I do wish they had less scummy practices or there were better alternatives.

    replies(1): >>22707955 #
    12. validuser ◴[27 Mar 20 23:18 UTC] No.22707766[source]▶
    Why would your collaborators have to install any software to use Jitsi? (It should work in a browser AFAIK)
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    13. privong ◴[27 Mar 20 23:42 UTC] No.22707901{3}[source]▶
    > Why would your collaborators have to install any software to use Jitsi? (It should work in a browser AFAIK)

    Honestly, I didn't know that there was in-browser capabilities. The last time I used jitsi was via the java desktop client, probably 3-4 years ago. It was a year or so later that I started using Zoom, so I didn't revisit jitsi.

    14. ek750 ◴[27 Mar 20 23:54 UTC] No.22707955[source]▶
    > We were all over the world and using Mac/Win/Linux. So latency was high and bandwidth was often narrow

    for me, i think this is key. I've used skype, hangouts, and gotomeeting over the years. only zoom works this well, multi-platform, including my fave, linux, in all sorts of conditions.

    i wish this wasn’t so, and that we had good cross-platform solutions. :(