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A message in the right direction, but they need to solve the recent macOS security issues. Let’s give them the time to (transparently) correct all the recently

A message in the right direction, but they need to solve the recent macOS security issues. Let’s give them the time to (transparently) correct all the recently reported issues.

laumars 7y ago
It's a template PR / sales pitch talking about how great they are and how they've had to adapt during the COVID-19 crisis (all of which aren't relevant to the security and privacy complaints being made) and there's only a boilerplate message about how they care about their users....and it's such a generic message it could have been ripped out of any other correspondence sent from any other company. Nothing about that message came across as sincere. Also one of the biggest core issues (their installer) was widely reported and condemned last year (or was it the year before?) so these aren't all new issues coming to light. In fact blaming the visibility of these problems to an influx of new users (re COVID-19) is just dishonest.
- ornornor 7y ago
  Because we’re technical and can smell the BS miles away. But a lot of the people deciding whether to keep using zoom at their corporation aren’t technical and it might be reassuring enough for them to keep using it. Not saying that’s ok but here we are.
  - laumars 7y ago
    I understand how PR works (literally my first words said it was PR) but that wasn't the point the OP was making to which I was responding. They said this was a message in the right direction and I'm saying this message doesn't mean nor commit them to anything.
    - ornornor 7y ago
      I agree with you, I was only deploring that it will work on most of the people calling the shots. Not with me. But I have to use zoom because our CEO says so.
      - laumars 7y ago
        I think you're underestimating a CEO's ability to smell bullshit. In fact many will have written similar letters themselves. The difference is: a CEO usually wouldn't care about security nor privacy violations like this because it's unlikely to affect the bottom line of the business they're managing. Thankfully most (in fact all) places I've worked, it's not the CEO who decides which video conferencing (et al) solution people use, he delegates that responsibility to his CTO or equivalent. Who has almost always then delegated that decision to me :)
  - AgloeDreams 7y ago
    Plus the end user isn't the person who chooses, Zoom is a great monetary value if you don't know the technical downsides.
  - floatingatoll 7y ago
    “We’re technical” is no excuse for a pitchfork mob. I’m technical and HN’s reply feels more like echo-chamber than a reasoned consideration of what they said. Almost every comment as of now is people reacting to the tone and dialect. It’s like there’s nothing to object to technically and so the mob has turned their rage onto speech patterns.
    - klibertp 7y ago
      With topics like this it's worth waiting for ca. 12h (depending on your timezone) and then reading the whole page of comments at once. I'm here 4h after you, and I saw 2 most upvoted comments as pretty sympathetic if not outright supportive to the company. There's a lot of discussion below them, with both sides being represented near-equally. There are some bad comments - one or several words of generic dismissal or insults, and one lengthy incoherent rant - but they are mostly flagged, dead, or downvoted to the bottom of the page. I believe using HN (for whatever reason) is a skill in its own right. If you want to use it as a tool for escaping your own echo-chamber, it takes some more thought to get right. Once you do, it works a significant percentage of the time, which is kind of impressive for a simple marketing platform of the Y Combinator (which is just a bunch of people with money and a bunch of people wanting that money to build or expand their business).
    - laumars 7y ago
      > It’s like there’s nothing to object to technically and so the mob has turned their rage onto speech patterns. I’m usually the first to roll my eyes at such mobs but this case is different. When you have a company that has a documented past of privacy and security violations and then releases a letter saying “sorry about the new reported problems but you wouldn’t have known about it if we weren’t so popular lately,” you can hardly blame us for getting ranty. It just demonstrates that fixing those problems was never a priority and thus that press release is really just meaningless platitudes.
      - floatingatoll 7y ago
        I absolutely blame us for pitchfork mob behavior in the initial reply, even if there’s a risk that Zoom is misbehaving intentionally. Theories about their motivations are no excuse for this. There is never an excuse for this. This behavior is unprofessional of us, disrespectful of us, and makes HN look no better than 4chan or Reddit to anyone who sees us doing so.
- m463 7y ago
  It also sort of says "think of the children" so they can continue their remote education. with zoom. :)
AgloeDreams 7y ago
And maybe performance too. It sucks. Watching a video call shouldn't eat 50% CPU on a rather well equipped iMac 4K.

A message in the right direction, but they need to solve the recent macOS security issues. Let’s give them the time to (transparently) correct all the recently reported issues.

laumars 7y ago

It's a template PR / sales pitch talking about how great they are and how they've had to adapt during the COVID-19 crisis (all of which aren't relevant to the security and privacy complaints being made) and there's only a boilerplate message about how they care about their users....and it's such a generic message it could have been ripped out of any other correspondence sent from any other company. Nothing about that message came across as sincere. Also one of the biggest core issues (their installer) was widely reported and condemned last year (or was it the year before?) so these aren't all new issues coming to light. In fact blaming the visibility of these problems to an influx of new users (re COVID-19) is just dishonest.

ornornor 7y ago
Because we’re technical and can smell the BS miles away. But a lot of the people deciding whether to keep using zoom at their corporation aren’t technical and it might be reassuring enough for them to keep using it. Not saying that’s ok but here we are.
- laumars 7y ago
  I understand how PR works (literally my first words said it was PR) but that wasn't the point the OP was making to which I was responding. They said this was a message in the right direction and I'm saying this message doesn't mean nor commit them to anything.
  - ornornor 7y ago
    I agree with you, I was only deploring that it will work on most of the people calling the shots. Not with me. But I have to use zoom because our CEO says so.
    - laumars 7y ago
      I think you're underestimating a CEO's ability to smell bullshit. In fact many will have written similar letters themselves. The difference is: a CEO usually wouldn't care about security nor privacy violations like this because it's unlikely to affect the bottom line of the business they're managing. Thankfully most (in fact all) places I've worked, it's not the CEO who decides which video conferencing (et al) solution people use, he delegates that responsibility to his CTO or equivalent. Who has almost always then delegated that decision to me :)
- AgloeDreams 7y ago
  Plus the end user isn't the person who chooses, Zoom is a great monetary value if you don't know the technical downsides.
- floatingatoll 7y ago
  “We’re technical” is no excuse for a pitchfork mob. I’m technical and HN’s reply feels more like echo-chamber than a reasoned consideration of what they said. Almost every comment as of now is people reacting to the tone and dialect. It’s like there’s nothing to object to technically and so the mob has turned their rage onto speech patterns.
  - klibertp 7y ago
    With topics like this it's worth waiting for ca. 12h (depending on your timezone) and then reading the whole page of comments at once. I'm here 4h after you, and I saw 2 most upvoted comments as pretty sympathetic if not outright supportive to the company. There's a lot of discussion below them, with both sides being represented near-equally. There are some bad comments - one or several words of generic dismissal or insults, and one lengthy incoherent rant - but they are mostly flagged, dead, or downvoted to the bottom of the page. I believe using HN (for whatever reason) is a skill in its own right. If you want to use it as a tool for escaping your own echo-chamber, it takes some more thought to get right. Once you do, it works a significant percentage of the time, which is kind of impressive for a simple marketing platform of the Y Combinator (which is just a bunch of people with money and a bunch of people wanting that money to build or expand their business).
  - laumars 7y ago
    > It’s like there’s nothing to object to technically and so the mob has turned their rage onto speech patterns. I’m usually the first to roll my eyes at such mobs but this case is different. When you have a company that has a documented past of privacy and security violations and then releases a letter saying “sorry about the new reported problems but you wouldn’t have known about it if we weren’t so popular lately,” you can hardly blame us for getting ranty. It just demonstrates that fixing those problems was never a priority and thus that press release is really just meaningless platitudes.
    - floatingatoll 7y ago
      I absolutely blame us for pitchfork mob behavior in the initial reply, even if there’s a risk that Zoom is misbehaving intentionally. Theories about their motivations are no excuse for this. There is never an excuse for this. This behavior is unprofessional of us, disrespectful of us, and makes HN look no better than 4chan or Reddit to anyone who sees us doing so.
m463 7y ago
It also sort of says "think of the children" so they can continue their remote education. with zoom. :)

AgloeDreams 7y ago

And maybe performance too. It sucks. Watching a video call shouldn't eat 50% CPU on a rather well equipped iMac 4K.