8 ms·

Rash decisions like this aren't going to do anything but hurt the students.

tw04 7y ago
How is it a rash decision? There are multiple alternatives that respect privacy and do more than pay lip service to security.
- contravariant 7y ago
  Although if I'm honest I wouldn't really know if the alternatives are going to be that much better. All alternatives that I know off still follows the same general pattern of letting all connections go through a central server where everyone with the right URL can participate. Sure I wouldn't trust a company that claims to have better security than they actually have and who add weird privacy violating features, but any of the common alternatives are by Microsoft and Google, which I don't trust either. So in the end I'm not sure what good will come of this decision, while it will definitely cause some confusion. It's possible I missed something and that Zoom truly is notably worse than any of the common alternatives. I'm partially posting this in the hopes that anyone can point out whether this is the case. And yes Zoom is definitely worse than a self hosted OSS solution like Jitsi (or even Jitsi without the self hosting) but we all know that that's not going to happen.
  - Spooky23 7y ago
    NYC schools have like a million students. How is jitsi going to scale to that?
    - __s 7y ago
      By having each school's IT setup a separate server School's have IT. It isn't always competent IT (I speak from experience), but clear instructions from up high can lead it
      - Spooky23 7y ago
        Or, you can flip a switch and enable Zoom, Google, or even Microsoft. IT people are hammered right now, nobody has time to futz around with some random oss tool that will further stress overutilized remote infrastructure.
      - godelski 7y ago
        While I believe this will work for NYC, I'm not sure how it'll work for Pumpkintown TN
        Spooky23 7y ago
        Pumpkinland, TN will use Zoom. It’s exponentially easier, except for older kids already using Google Classroom.
        godelski 7y ago
        That's kinda my point. That the IT in a major city can use a custom system but that discludes a lot of people. I would wager that most schools don't have a decent IT department. I know that when I was in high school they weren't great and I grew up in a fairly affluent area. Not everyone has the ability to "roll their own"
    - contravariant 7y ago
      It probably isn't, but one could hope. Edit: If I'm honest I'm not even sure how meet.jit.si can function at it's current scale. Especially because I've found no way to send them money.
      - fock 7y ago
        I think it hosts about a thousand rooms on a lowly single core - absolutely unbelievable in the age of kubernetes, I know... Given that, it needs bandwidth (but Zoom needs that as well for a 30 participant video conf...) and this seems paid for by the consulting company upselling it to companies.
  - eagsalazar2 7y ago
    Zoom is known to have at best been massively incompetent and at worst to have been grossly irresponsible and possibly malicious. Sure other solutions might be just as bad but that is hardly and argument against ditching Zoom immediately. If you've missed the many articles about their weirdly bad security you should definitely go read them.
    - contravariant 7y ago
      I saw those articles. Quite a few talked about how Zoom was weirdly insistent that they had end to end encryption (which they do not), and they added some disturbing privacy violating features to the desktop client which they're oddly pushy about, also their privacy statement wasn't exactly reassuring. All red flags, but strictly speaking they don't really impact the security much (they might do god knows what to the metadata, but to my knowledge, that's the same with most alternatives). The one truly sensitive issue is the zoombombing, and I haven't been able to figure out whether that's truly a security bug or if zoom is just the biggest attack surface and has some terrible default settings.
  - tw04 7y ago
    Zoom is notably worse. They rolled their own encryption and it's really, really bad. They also send keys through China even if none of the participants are in China. Questionable behavior even if they were perfect in every other way, which they aren't.
- techntoke 7y ago
  Be careful, you are going up a Chinese-based company that will downvote anything negative and give excuses that most people won't know anything about.
  - eagsalazar2 7y ago
    Is this really happening? Lots of very reasonable comments are in fact getting downvoted. Because it is Chinese??? WTF? Are you saying this is a patriotism thing? Or are you saying either Zoom or Chinese organizations are paying people to downvote? Seriously this is bugging me. If this is going on on HN that is a serious violation. Normally HN seems like a sanctuary from crap like that.
    - loopz 7y ago
      Zoom seems popular, so many are willing to sacrifice principles for using something easy. Preconceptions are big everywhere, reinforced not fixed by mod points.
tjohns 7y ago
It's not like there aren't other options out there they could be using. I'm sure this was factored into the decision given current events. At this point, I think it's more than fair to be worried about Zoom's security.

tw04 7y ago

How is it a rash decision? There are multiple alternatives that respect privacy and do more than pay lip service to security.

contravariant 7y ago
Although if I'm honest I wouldn't really know if the alternatives are going to be that much better. All alternatives that I know off still follows the same general pattern of letting all connections go through a central server where everyone with the right URL can participate. Sure I wouldn't trust a company that claims to have better security than they actually have and who add weird privacy violating features, but any of the common alternatives are by Microsoft and Google, which I don't trust either. So in the end I'm not sure what good will come of this decision, while it will definitely cause some confusion. It's possible I missed something and that Zoom truly is notably worse than any of the common alternatives. I'm partially posting this in the hopes that anyone can point out whether this is the case. And yes Zoom is definitely worse than a self hosted OSS solution like Jitsi (or even Jitsi without the self hosting) but we all know that that's not going to happen.
- Spooky23 7y ago
  NYC schools have like a million students. How is jitsi going to scale to that?
  - __s 7y ago
    By having each school's IT setup a separate server School's have IT. It isn't always competent IT (I speak from experience), but clear instructions from up high can lead it
    - Spooky23 7y ago
      Or, you can flip a switch and enable Zoom, Google, or even Microsoft. IT people are hammered right now, nobody has time to futz around with some random oss tool that will further stress overutilized remote infrastructure.
    - godelski 7y ago
      While I believe this will work for NYC, I'm not sure how it'll work for Pumpkintown TN
      - Spooky23 7y ago
        Pumpkinland, TN will use Zoom. It’s exponentially easier, except for older kids already using Google Classroom.
        godelski 7y ago
        That's kinda my point. That the IT in a major city can use a custom system but that discludes a lot of people. I would wager that most schools don't have a decent IT department. I know that when I was in high school they weren't great and I grew up in a fairly affluent area. Not everyone has the ability to "roll their own"
  - contravariant 7y ago
    It probably isn't, but one could hope. Edit: If I'm honest I'm not even sure how meet.jit.si can function at it's current scale. Especially because I've found no way to send them money.
    - fock 7y ago
      I think it hosts about a thousand rooms on a lowly single core - absolutely unbelievable in the age of kubernetes, I know... Given that, it needs bandwidth (but Zoom needs that as well for a 30 participant video conf...) and this seems paid for by the consulting company upselling it to companies.
- eagsalazar2 7y ago
  Zoom is known to have at best been massively incompetent and at worst to have been grossly irresponsible and possibly malicious. Sure other solutions might be just as bad but that is hardly and argument against ditching Zoom immediately. If you've missed the many articles about their weirdly bad security you should definitely go read them.
  - contravariant 7y ago
    I saw those articles. Quite a few talked about how Zoom was weirdly insistent that they had end to end encryption (which they do not), and they added some disturbing privacy violating features to the desktop client which they're oddly pushy about, also their privacy statement wasn't exactly reassuring. All red flags, but strictly speaking they don't really impact the security much (they might do god knows what to the metadata, but to my knowledge, that's the same with most alternatives). The one truly sensitive issue is the zoombombing, and I haven't been able to figure out whether that's truly a security bug or if zoom is just the biggest attack surface and has some terrible default settings.
- tw04 7y ago
  Zoom is notably worse. They rolled their own encryption and it's really, really bad. They also send keys through China even if none of the participants are in China. Questionable behavior even if they were perfect in every other way, which they aren't.
techntoke 7y ago
Be careful, you are going up a Chinese-based company that will downvote anything negative and give excuses that most people won't know anything about.
- eagsalazar2 7y ago
  Is this really happening? Lots of very reasonable comments are in fact getting downvoted. Because it is Chinese??? WTF? Are you saying this is a patriotism thing? Or are you saying either Zoom or Chinese organizations are paying people to downvote? Seriously this is bugging me. If this is going on on HN that is a serious violation. Normally HN seems like a sanctuary from crap like that.
  - loopz 7y ago
    Zoom seems popular, so many are willing to sacrifice principles for using something easy. Preconceptions are big everywhere, reinforced not fixed by mod points.

tjohns 7y ago

It's not like there aren't other options out there they could be using. I'm sure this was factored into the decision given current events. At this point, I think it's more than fair to be worried about Zoom's security.