12 ms·

Zoom corrects usage numbers: says it has 300M daily meeting participants

78 points by ciccionamente 6y ago

Rerarom 6y ago
I like how they say that they're sorry they referred to them as people.
mr_gibbins 6y ago
Article sponsored by Microsoft, Google.
- bengale 6y ago
  There does seem to be quite the media campaign against zoom. Interestingly its highlighting that strange divide between those of us that follow 'tech news' and those that don't. I've seen a few of the tech types try and get people to switch away from zoom with very little success over the last few weeks, no-one outside of this sphere seems to give even the slightest damn about what's being briefed to the tech media.
  - tibbydudeza 6y ago
    I concur ... the spate of story plants about their encryption implementation issues and the one incident of them misrouting calls through a datacenter in China. Some three letter agency is involved.
    - DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
      not to forget there is also the case of installing a local webserver to bypass the deprecated NPAPI api (deprecated bc of security issues!), ... never mind that they have historically done one thing and pushed the opposite point in their PR, ... people will rather trust a vendor like Zoom and bend over backwards to make excuses (even it means getting rat-f*ed) than admitting Zoom's past behavior doesn't justify that trust. here is ThoughtWorks' "Head of Tech" saying "we've done the threat modeling and trust us it will be fine for you too". https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6660369880577036288/ https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6660369... it's not how threat models work but nevermind, the post still has 80+ likes of people who call themselves engineers ...
    - lostlogin 6y ago
      When you have the likes of the British Prime Minister screwing it up publicly, you don’t need any three letter agency. https://www.dailydot.com/debug/boris-johnson-zoom-meeting-id/ https://www.dailydot.com/debug/boris-johnson-zoom-meeting-id...
      - enitihas 6y ago
        On the contrary, you have the British Prime Minister using it because it is too easy to use. I doubt it would have been the preference of British Intelligence that the PM use Zoom.
7777fps 6y ago
They apparently have 300M daily meeting participants which is actually more impressive than this headline.
- sdan 6y ago
  Its 3x what Google Meet reported in their recent blog post, just for context.
  - neuronic 6y ago
    I am a fairly young consultant and have initially advocated against Zoom due to the glaring privacy issues. Obviously to no avail. Nobody cares. People just want to open a service and have it work and Zoom excels at that. As Teams was already there for my large enterprise client, we tried that at first but nope. Has issues with screen sharing and makes problems even with less than a dozen users. I never had any Zoom connection issues and among my consultant company and my client I have participated in Zoom meetings with 200-300 people (we did some events digitally) with absolutely zero issues. Grid view is amazing as well. Jitsi exists but I couldn't even convince a single person to switch for more than one session. Zoom works and nothing else counts. In Europe I don't know any company that would get Google licenses for Meet due to ... Google being Google. It's all Zoom (professional & private) and Houseparty (private).
    - davedx 6y ago
      > Obviously to no avail. Nobody cares. People just want to open a service and have it work and Zoom excels at that. Not true in my experience. Some people definitely care: the CIO at the mid sized company I work at has restricted Zoom usage; and my wife's company also cares (they started with Zoom and have moved to Teams partly because of Zoom issues). Keep trying, not everyone cares indeed but plenty do, especially when it impacts data regulations/security.
    - teruakohatu 6y ago
      I have had plenty of issue with Zoom. Quality being bad, people not understanding the interface and my university had people zoom-bombing or whatever it is called. I recently accidently logged into a session with the wrong credentials (whatever Zoom defaulted to, not my official uni login) and everyone thought I was zoom-bombing them. I couldn't understand why I was being cross-questioned by people in the session. Unfortunately the media have pushed zoom so hard that everyone assumes it is the best option and don't want to hear of anything else.
tibbydudeza 6y ago
Still they are winning with their branding and their free 45 min tier ... people don't talk about telecon anymore but rather they are having a Zoom meeting. But their UI really could use some rework ... it is really crappy.
- sdoering 6y ago
  My SO has to use a multitude of tools, because all her university teachers use different tools, because there was no standard up front. She (and I have to agree sitting next to her) states that Zoom by far has the best usability and user experience. It is easy to use, features are quite detectable and stuff like virtual raised hands are great for teaching bigger groups. So I would say it is the best tool out there currently. Personally I prefer Google Meet - but that is because I use it daily for work and it became free only days ago.
  - teruakohatu 6y ago
    I am suffering through Zoom at university and I had no idea about virtual raised hands existed, the UI could be improved.
- pulse7 6y ago
  *Small correction: free 40 minutes
JackPoach 6y ago
Regular folks don't care. Zoom is currently, waaay better than anything else, although may be not for long. But venture capitalists and investors have their egos. It's funny to have the same fight (DAU and how engaged users really are) between Slack and MS Teams.
- 0898 6y ago
  Personally, I find Zoom's breakout rooms a complete game-changer when it comes to hosting online events. If you use them properly they can reduce or eliminate a lot of the energy-sapping effects of online meetings.
  - fock 6y ago
    discord has them too and does them even better. + it runs in a browser...
- sdoering 6y ago
  I agree and don't understand the downvotes. I have in the last weeks probably seen most of the tools out there and used a lot. As said in another comment my SO has to use multiple tools. So Zoom won from a usability and feature perspective for non technical users.
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
  I’ve written video software. Zoom’s client blows away anything that I’ve seen from anyone else -by a significant margin. When you can have 30 active video thumbnails on a single screen, with very little latency, on a humbly-specced machine, and the fan doesn’t even kick in, you have some impressive work.
  - icebraining 6y ago
    I have wondered if they're combining them on the server-side and just pushing a single stream to the client. Would that be detectable?
KrilleB 6y ago
This was expected already, anyway it's better to use jitsi, better security and privacy
redis_mlc 6y ago
Funny how they admit that AFTER their IPO. Lawyers: get your securities class action lawsuit in!
- GhettoMaestro 6y ago
  Learn to read, fuck face. IPO was in 2019.
- detaro 6y ago
  They made the statement they corrected less than two weeks ago. How is their IPO last year relevant?
Jonnax 6y ago
Honestly Zoom just works how you expect it to. Other applications do exist and they're bad from a usability perspective. Google hangouts maxes out my CPU. Teams is a horrible electron app which I'm loathe to use. So the negatives are that it's unencrypted, traffic might be routed through China sometimes and unknown participants can join if they have the meeting link with password. For the majority of people they're not too bothered. I'd argue that security is about having an understanding of the risk and mitigating it accordingly. And for a lot of cases zoom is fine.
- jcelerier 6y ago
  > Google hangouts maxes out my CPU. Teams is a horrible electron app which I'm loathe to use. A good example that there are some benefits to using Qt (like Zoom) to make correctly performing apps
  - 72deluxe 6y ago
    I don't think it's Qt. It's another thin window layer, duilib I think? Their Windows SDK demo pages certainly use it anyway. duilib is here: https://github.com/duilib/duilib https://github.com/duilib/duilib Using the Zoom SDK with its many spelling mistakes and broken English comments, I am sure that a Chinese UI toolkit would be preferable to Zoom, since their development team really does seem to be Chinese.
    - jcelerier 6y ago
      It's definitely Qt with QtQuick. nm -D -C zoom | grep Q https://paste.ofcode.org/vZWguEXM6f7ib6nuCJcMEX https://paste.ofcode.org/vZWguEXM6f7ib6nuCJcMEX
      - 72deluxe 6y ago
        Ah you are on Linux! I am using Windows. That'll explain it!
- DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
PeterStuer 6y ago
All conferencing platforms have had issues. Zoom does seem to be fairly responsive when it comes to vulnerabilities and security patching. As for 'state actor' interference, that is generally called 'lawful interception' when you drop the hype and FUD. I'm sure Zoom does/will comply with those regulations just like all the others.
hombre_fatal 6y ago
I've listened to multiple major podcasts lately that suspiciously mention Zoom during the show in obvious "organic" ads. Most recently was Conan O'Brien's "Connan Makes a Friend" podcast where they have what are obvious potted mentions of Zoom on the show. In one instance, Conan pretends that he accidentally minimized the video conference app they're using. And finally his co-host is like "just click the Zoom icon to bring it back!" Like, that would obviously be cut if it was real. In another instance, Conan says he's really bad with tech but has been getting better now that he has to figure out his laptop without employees around to help him. And then he adds that once the quarantine is over, he'll probably forget everything... except how to use Zoom, of course. Just thought it was somewhat relevant here since it seems Zoom is doing some massive marketing campaigns. Not to mention how it seems in ubiquitous use and everyone online is constantly mentioning it. Pretty damn impressive.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- lathiat 6y ago
  Aren't the FCC in the US pretty strict about requiring you to specifically tag paid material? This could just as easily be paid advertising as a joke (zoom is getting most of the news cycle for 'meetings' atm, so it's the topical product to joke on). And in some countries I'd more easily believe it's paid but I see a lot of work even creators/youtubers have to go into to explicitly declare sponsorship's I'd just be surprised. If that's not the case please let me know!
  - alwayseasy 6y ago
    Exactly, I don't see why Zoom would open another front of negative press if they break the law on disguised advertising. Unless there's a culture problem of "break things and move fast".
  - jasongill 6y ago
    No, the FCC is not at all strict about having to tag paid material. You may mean the FTC, but as far as I know there is nothing that says that TV shows have to disclose any sponsored segments
maallooc 6y ago
Whenever I'm using Zoom I'm astounded by how it works. Seriously. What black magic are they performing? It works remarkably well. Just like magic. I've used Skype, Google hangout and others. They are like 1-2 years behind Zoom. Poor encryption? China? Security issues? Whatever. It just works unlike others.
- upofadown 6y ago
  >What black magic are they performing? They run all the traffic through their servers to avoid the inevitable NAT issues. So the magic is probably having a while lot of money to buy enough server capacity and bandwidth so that they never run short.
  - jtdev 6y ago
    PRC funded... Yeah, let's support a communist, authoritarian regime known for committing massive human rights abuses. No thanks, It's a hard pass on Zoom for this American.
  - fock 6y ago
    and then they combine that with an insistence on using their un-sandboxed app. Well, seems like the same magic, the yahoo-toolbar used back in the day...
Legogris 6y ago
I don't want to imply too much here, but I'm surprised by all the people here saying Zoom "just works" whenever Zoom is mentioned. It's a recurring mantra. I've had various really annoying issues (completely blank settings windows, sound devices not getting recognized or used properly, crashes). All of these I've experienced both historically and during the past month. Neither Ubuntu, Arch or NixOS, all on three different laptop models, have been free of show-stopping issues. When a customer wants to use Zoom for a call, it's been about 50/50 that we can do the call without issues. I just find it suspicious that all the top comments are "it just works" when my experience has been the complete opposite, in various environments. So far Google Meet and Whereby (formerly Appear.in) have been the least hassle-free in my experience (probably due to being web-based). Looking forward to trying Jitsi when I have the time and inclination, it looks really promising.
- JamesG124 6y ago
  What is the implication you are trying to cancel with "I don't want to imply too much here"?
- reagular 6y ago
  I like linux myself a lot. But you can't build your opinion on the software based on their linux version.
  - mnw21cam 6y ago
    Yes. Yes, you absolutely can.
    - adjkant 6y ago
      Not if you're assessing comments like "it just works". Zoom making their software badly on Linux is 100% in line with the company. They aren't aiming for good design, they are aiming for the nontechnical user using out of the box windows or MacOS.
      - mnw21cam 6y ago
andrewzah 6y ago
I have had very few problems with zoom over the last 2 years. My company has always used it, with people connecting from various linux, windows, and apple machines. We are all remote, and have pair-programmed via screensharing for hours with zero issues. As government contractors we'll most likely have to switch due it to being banned by the pentagon [0] (bad optics), so I guess we'll use jitsi, but it's quite unfortunate. All of the DnD people I know are switching to it because it... just works. We haven't had any issues there either, but I can't speak about calls with ~15+ people. I don't really like any of the alternatives: gotomeeting, chime, bluejeans, webex, discord, or god forbid, skype. [0]: https://www.stripes.com/news/us/zoom-for-official-use-is-no-longer-an-option-for-dod-personnel-report-says-1.625973 https://www.stripes.com/news/us/zoom-for-official-use-is-no-...
jtdev 6y ago
More people should know that Zoom is a Chinese company, likely sponsored by the CPC - which is known for human rights abuses, corporate espionage, silencing of dissenters, concerted efforts to hide/downplay the threat of Coronavirus, etc., etc., etc. These things should disqualify Zoom from being used by corporations outside of China...
- bzb3 6y ago
  I'm bored so let me bite: how is Zoom a Chinese company
  - ma2rten 6y ago
    https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/15/nancy-pelosi-calls-zoom-a-chinese-entity.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/15/nancy-pelosi-calls-zoom-a-ch...
- jdm2212 6y ago
  Zoom is an American company, with an American CEO, listed on an American stock exchange, headquartered in the United States of America. Like many companies that are lax about security, it outsourced a lot of its engineering to save money. If you want to avoid it, avoid it because it clearly prioritizes good UX over security for a communication tool where security is critical. But please lay off the evidence-free claim that Zoom is linked to the CCP.
  - jtdev 6y ago
    It wasn't "outsourcing", Zoom literally has 1/3 of all employees in China. Yuan was born, raised, and educated in China. Given the recent "oversights" at the company that laid a foundation for Chinese espionage, I don't think I'm being too paranoid in entertaining the idea that Yuan might be a Chinese state actor. It's also a well known fact that Zoom has substantial foreign investment from China. Legally, Zoom is a U.S. based company, but in practice the company has a Chinese "heart".
    - 6y ago
sadfev 6y ago
I prefer Teams or Skype for Business, they works best. I don’t like the zoom UI or setup

78 points by ciccionamente 6y ago

Rerarom 6y ago

I like how they say that they're sorry they referred to them as people.

mr_gibbins 6y ago

Article sponsored by Microsoft, Google.

bengale 6y ago
There does seem to be quite the media campaign against zoom. Interestingly its highlighting that strange divide between those of us that follow 'tech news' and those that don't. I've seen a few of the tech types try and get people to switch away from zoom with very little success over the last few weeks, no-one outside of this sphere seems to give even the slightest damn about what's being briefed to the tech media.
- tibbydudeza 6y ago
  I concur ... the spate of story plants about their encryption implementation issues and the one incident of them misrouting calls through a datacenter in China. Some three letter agency is involved.
  - DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
    not to forget there is also the case of installing a local webserver to bypass the deprecated NPAPI api (deprecated bc of security issues!), ... never mind that they have historically done one thing and pushed the opposite point in their PR, ... people will rather trust a vendor like Zoom and bend over backwards to make excuses (even it means getting rat-f*ed) than admitting Zoom's past behavior doesn't justify that trust. here is ThoughtWorks' "Head of Tech" saying "we've done the threat modeling and trust us it will be fine for you too". https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6660369880577036288/ https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6660369... it's not how threat models work but nevermind, the post still has 80+ likes of people who call themselves engineers ...
  - lostlogin 6y ago
    When you have the likes of the British Prime Minister screwing it up publicly, you don’t need any three letter agency. https://www.dailydot.com/debug/boris-johnson-zoom-meeting-id/ https://www.dailydot.com/debug/boris-johnson-zoom-meeting-id...
    - enitihas 6y ago
      On the contrary, you have the British Prime Minister using it because it is too easy to use. I doubt it would have been the preference of British Intelligence that the PM use Zoom.

7777fps 6y ago

They apparently have 300M daily meeting participants which is actually more impressive than this headline.

sdan 6y ago
Its 3x what Google Meet reported in their recent blog post, just for context.
- neuronic 6y ago
  I am a fairly young consultant and have initially advocated against Zoom due to the glaring privacy issues. Obviously to no avail. Nobody cares. People just want to open a service and have it work and Zoom excels at that. As Teams was already there for my large enterprise client, we tried that at first but nope. Has issues with screen sharing and makes problems even with less than a dozen users. I never had any Zoom connection issues and among my consultant company and my client I have participated in Zoom meetings with 200-300 people (we did some events digitally) with absolutely zero issues. Grid view is amazing as well. Jitsi exists but I couldn't even convince a single person to switch for more than one session. Zoom works and nothing else counts. In Europe I don't know any company that would get Google licenses for Meet due to ... Google being Google. It's all Zoom (professional & private) and Houseparty (private).
  - davedx 6y ago
    > Obviously to no avail. Nobody cares. People just want to open a service and have it work and Zoom excels at that. Not true in my experience. Some people definitely care: the CIO at the mid sized company I work at has restricted Zoom usage; and my wife's company also cares (they started with Zoom and have moved to Teams partly because of Zoom issues). Keep trying, not everyone cares indeed but plenty do, especially when it impacts data regulations/security.
  - teruakohatu 6y ago
    I have had plenty of issue with Zoom. Quality being bad, people not understanding the interface and my university had people zoom-bombing or whatever it is called. I recently accidently logged into a session with the wrong credentials (whatever Zoom defaulted to, not my official uni login) and everyone thought I was zoom-bombing them. I couldn't understand why I was being cross-questioned by people in the session. Unfortunately the media have pushed zoom so hard that everyone assumes it is the best option and don't want to hear of anything else.

tibbydudeza 6y ago

Still they are winning with their branding and their free 45 min tier ... people don't talk about telecon anymore but rather they are having a Zoom meeting. But their UI really could use some rework ... it is really crappy.

sdoering 6y ago
My SO has to use a multitude of tools, because all her university teachers use different tools, because there was no standard up front. She (and I have to agree sitting next to her) states that Zoom by far has the best usability and user experience. It is easy to use, features are quite detectable and stuff like virtual raised hands are great for teaching bigger groups. So I would say it is the best tool out there currently. Personally I prefer Google Meet - but that is because I use it daily for work and it became free only days ago.
- teruakohatu 6y ago
  I am suffering through Zoom at university and I had no idea about virtual raised hands existed, the UI could be improved.
pulse7 6y ago
*Small correction: free 40 minutes

JackPoach 6y ago

Regular folks don't care. Zoom is currently, waaay better than anything else, although may be not for long. But venture capitalists and investors have their egos. It's funny to have the same fight (DAU and how engaged users really are) between Slack and MS Teams.

0898 6y ago
Personally, I find Zoom's breakout rooms a complete game-changer when it comes to hosting online events. If you use them properly they can reduce or eliminate a lot of the energy-sapping effects of online meetings.
- fock 6y ago
  discord has them too and does them even better. + it runs in a browser...
sdoering 6y ago
I agree and don't understand the downvotes. I have in the last weeks probably seen most of the tools out there and used a lot. As said in another comment my SO has to use multiple tools. So Zoom won from a usability and feature perspective for non technical users.
ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
I’ve written video software. Zoom’s client blows away anything that I’ve seen from anyone else -by a significant margin. When you can have 30 active video thumbnails on a single screen, with very little latency, on a humbly-specced machine, and the fan doesn’t even kick in, you have some impressive work.
- icebraining 6y ago
  I have wondered if they're combining them on the server-side and just pushing a single stream to the client. Would that be detectable?

KrilleB 6y ago

This was expected already, anyway it's better to use jitsi, better security and privacy

redis_mlc 6y ago

Funny how they admit that AFTER their IPO. Lawyers: get your securities class action lawsuit in!

GhettoMaestro 6y ago
Learn to read, fuck face. IPO was in 2019.
detaro 6y ago
They made the statement they corrected less than two weeks ago. How is their IPO last year relevant?

Jonnax 6y ago

Honestly Zoom just works how you expect it to. Other applications do exist and they're bad from a usability perspective. Google hangouts maxes out my CPU. Teams is a horrible electron app which I'm loathe to use. So the negatives are that it's unencrypted, traffic might be routed through China sometimes and unknown participants can join if they have the meeting link with password. For the majority of people they're not too bothered. I'd argue that security is about having an understanding of the risk and mitigating it accordingly. And for a lot of cases zoom is fine.

jcelerier 6y ago
> Google hangouts maxes out my CPU. Teams is a horrible electron app which I'm loathe to use. A good example that there are some benefits to using Qt (like Zoom) to make correctly performing apps
- 72deluxe 6y ago
  I don't think it's Qt. It's another thin window layer, duilib I think? Their Windows SDK demo pages certainly use it anyway. duilib is here: https://github.com/duilib/duilib https://github.com/duilib/duilib Using the Zoom SDK with its many spelling mistakes and broken English comments, I am sure that a Chinese UI toolkit would be preferable to Zoom, since their development team really does seem to be Chinese.
  - jcelerier 6y ago
    It's definitely Qt with QtQuick. nm -D -C zoom | grep Q https://paste.ofcode.org/vZWguEXM6f7ib6nuCJcMEX https://paste.ofcode.org/vZWguEXM6f7ib6nuCJcMEX
    - 72deluxe 6y ago
      Ah you are on Linux! I am using Windows. That'll explain it!
DyslexicAtheist 6y ago

PeterStuer 6y ago

All conferencing platforms have had issues. Zoom does seem to be fairly responsive when it comes to vulnerabilities and security patching. As for 'state actor' interference, that is generally called 'lawful interception' when you drop the hype and FUD. I'm sure Zoom does/will comply with those regulations just like all the others.

hombre_fatal 6y ago

I've listened to multiple major podcasts lately that suspiciously mention Zoom during the show in obvious "organic" ads. Most recently was Conan O'Brien's "Connan Makes a Friend" podcast where they have what are obvious potted mentions of Zoom on the show. In one instance, Conan pretends that he accidentally minimized the video conference app they're using. And finally his co-host is like "just click the Zoom icon to bring it back!" Like, that would obviously be cut if it was real. In another instance, Conan says he's really bad with tech but has been getting better now that he has to figure out his laptop without employees around to help him. And then he adds that once the quarantine is over, he'll probably forget everything... except how to use Zoom, of course. Just thought it was somewhat relevant here since it seems Zoom is doing some massive marketing campaigns. Not to mention how it seems in ubiquitous use and everyone online is constantly mentioning it. Pretty damn impressive.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
lathiat 6y ago
Aren't the FCC in the US pretty strict about requiring you to specifically tag paid material? This could just as easily be paid advertising as a joke (zoom is getting most of the news cycle for 'meetings' atm, so it's the topical product to joke on). And in some countries I'd more easily believe it's paid but I see a lot of work even creators/youtubers have to go into to explicitly declare sponsorship's I'd just be surprised. If that's not the case please let me know!
- alwayseasy 6y ago
  Exactly, I don't see why Zoom would open another front of negative press if they break the law on disguised advertising. Unless there's a culture problem of "break things and move fast".
- jasongill 6y ago
  No, the FCC is not at all strict about having to tag paid material. You may mean the FTC, but as far as I know there is nothing that says that TV shows have to disclose any sponsored segments

maallooc 6y ago

Whenever I'm using Zoom I'm astounded by how it works. Seriously. What black magic are they performing? It works remarkably well. Just like magic. I've used Skype, Google hangout and others. They are like 1-2 years behind Zoom. Poor encryption? China? Security issues? Whatever. It just works unlike others.

upofadown 6y ago
>What black magic are they performing? They run all the traffic through their servers to avoid the inevitable NAT issues. So the magic is probably having a while lot of money to buy enough server capacity and bandwidth so that they never run short.
- jtdev 6y ago
  PRC funded... Yeah, let's support a communist, authoritarian regime known for committing massive human rights abuses. No thanks, It's a hard pass on Zoom for this American.
- fock 6y ago
  and then they combine that with an insistence on using their un-sandboxed app. Well, seems like the same magic, the yahoo-toolbar used back in the day...

Legogris 6y ago

I don't want to imply too much here, but I'm surprised by all the people here saying Zoom "just works" whenever Zoom is mentioned. It's a recurring mantra. I've had various really annoying issues (completely blank settings windows, sound devices not getting recognized or used properly, crashes). All of these I've experienced both historically and during the past month. Neither Ubuntu, Arch or NixOS, all on three different laptop models, have been free of show-stopping issues. When a customer wants to use Zoom for a call, it's been about 50/50 that we can do the call without issues. I just find it suspicious that all the top comments are "it just works" when my experience has been the complete opposite, in various environments. So far Google Meet and Whereby (formerly Appear.in) have been the least hassle-free in my experience (probably due to being web-based). Looking forward to trying Jitsi when I have the time and inclination, it looks really promising.

JamesG124 6y ago
What is the implication you are trying to cancel with "I don't want to imply too much here"?
reagular 6y ago
I like linux myself a lot. But you can't build your opinion on the software based on their linux version.
- mnw21cam 6y ago
  Yes. Yes, you absolutely can.
  - adjkant 6y ago
    Not if you're assessing comments like "it just works". Zoom making their software badly on Linux is 100% in line with the company. They aren't aiming for good design, they are aiming for the nontechnical user using out of the box windows or MacOS.
    - mnw21cam 6y ago

andrewzah 6y ago

I have had very few problems with zoom over the last 2 years. My company has always used it, with people connecting from various linux, windows, and apple machines. We are all remote, and have pair-programmed via screensharing for hours with zero issues. As government contractors we'll most likely have to switch due it to being banned by the pentagon [0] (bad optics), so I guess we'll use jitsi, but it's quite unfortunate. All of the DnD people I know are switching to it because it... just works. We haven't had any issues there either, but I can't speak about calls with ~15+ people. I don't really like any of the alternatives: gotomeeting, chime, bluejeans, webex, discord, or god forbid, skype. [0]: https://www.stripes.com/news/us/zoom-for-official-use-is-no-longer-an-option-for-dod-personnel-report-says-1.625973 https://www.stripes.com/news/us/zoom-for-official-use-is-no-...

jtdev 6y ago

More people should know that Zoom is a Chinese company, likely sponsored by the CPC - which is known for human rights abuses, corporate espionage, silencing of dissenters, concerted efforts to hide/downplay the threat of Coronavirus, etc., etc., etc. These things should disqualify Zoom from being used by corporations outside of China...

bzb3 6y ago
I'm bored so let me bite: how is Zoom a Chinese company
- ma2rten 6y ago
  https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/15/nancy-pelosi-calls-zoom-a-chinese-entity.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/15/nancy-pelosi-calls-zoom-a-ch...
jdm2212 6y ago
Zoom is an American company, with an American CEO, listed on an American stock exchange, headquartered in the United States of America. Like many companies that are lax about security, it outsourced a lot of its engineering to save money. If you want to avoid it, avoid it because it clearly prioritizes good UX over security for a communication tool where security is critical. But please lay off the evidence-free claim that Zoom is linked to the CCP.
- jtdev 6y ago
  It wasn't "outsourcing", Zoom literally has 1/3 of all employees in China. Yuan was born, raised, and educated in China. Given the recent "oversights" at the company that laid a foundation for Chinese espionage, I don't think I'm being too paranoid in entertaining the idea that Yuan might be a Chinese state actor. It's also a well known fact that Zoom has substantial foreign investment from China. Legally, Zoom is a U.S. based company, but in practice the company has a Chinese "heart".
  - 6y ago

sadfev 6y ago

I prefer Teams or Skype for Business, they works best. I don’t like the zoom UI or setup