Zoom needs to clean up its privacy act

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.

> the company is apparently still going to worry about milking advertising dollars out of me

They will never not do that. Paying customer or not, no business is ever going to say "let's give up a huge amount of revenue so we can avoid invading people's privacy and annoying them with ads they don't want to see". To do so would be to miss an opportunity to make even more money.

The fact you're a paying customer also implies you have disposable income and you're willing to spend it. Ironically, paying money to avoid advertising makes your attention even more valuable to advertisers.

The only way they'll stop advertising is if it's not profitable. The only solution is to block all ads and reduce their return on investment as much as possible.