14 ms·

Not Using Zoom

282 points by LaSombra 3y ago

brightlancer 3y ago
I recommend Jitsi over Zoom for lots of reasons, but "AI" isn't some magical new danger point. * Most of the legal terms are standard for internet services. * Any and all unencrypted internet communication will be monitored by the services hosting that communication. * If we replace "AI" with "automation tools", then this is a nothing burger. Or to put it another way, Does anyone really think Zoom (or other internet services) aren't running automated tools to catch/ block/ report child porn? How do folks think those automation tools are trained? If you don't want service providers monitoring your communication, ENCRYPT IT. Otherwise, it doesn't matter if they're using the "AI" boogeyman or older automation tools.
korginator 3y ago
At work, there is a whole process and checklists for "approved" software. Zoom is one of them. Most Microsoft software are in this approved list. Our work laptops are locked down and you can't install anything. Our development laptops are a bit more open, but they are monitored as well. However this is not the issue. How do you get a whole organization of several thousand people to move from zoom to another platform? In my experience, this has only happened because the provider simply could not meet the QoS/ToS, or they were priced out. Also, most people just don't care. They just want something working well. We've got Cisco webex and Microsoft teams, but guess what most people prefer? Zoom. Because "it just works better".
smithcoin 3y ago
Are meet’s terms any better?
- ethbr0 3y ago
  And I'm curious what Team's current terms are too.
  - golergka 3y ago
    I would be very surprised to find out they're not legally obliged to guarantee dumpster fire netcode and worst possible UI out of all the competitors.
  - inglor 3y ago
    If no one answers I'll ask internally (I'm in Microsoft but just an engineer and not in teams), I can tell you that in our org we don't have access to customer data, actual customer data is encrypted anyway and every access to a production machine is recorded, audited and has to be justified legally (and is very rare to the point I haven't _actually_ seen it done except to literally learn how to go through the process on a machine with no dat). I'm also curious what the ToS says about teams, if it allows it I'd be pretty disgusted and I was very surprised Zoom does this..
    - ethbr0 3y ago
      I get it from Zoom's perspective: it's a core differentiator and strategic future advantage for them. I think it's going to lose them more customers than make them money... but we'll see. MS is a more interesting case, because they have a tradition of understanding enterprise concerns, and don't really need the data from Teams given their product portfolio. But, common strategic sense often doesn't stop tactical, myopic product manager blunders, so I am curious.
      - michaelcampbell 3y ago
        > I think it's going to lose them more customers than make them money... but we'll see. We will indeed. Given the vast, vast majority of users' reading of TOS in the first place, much less understanding them, this to me seems very unlikely.
- aaomidi 3y ago
  Technically you can turn on e2ee on Meet.
- dealuromanet 3y ago
  This is what I found from searching, but we do need a more clear and direct answer from Google. https://support.google.com/meet/answer/9852160#zippy=%2Cprivacy-transparency https://support.google.com/meet/answer/9852160#zippy=%2Cpriv... "Google does not store video, audio, or chat data unless a meeting participant initiates a recording during the Meet session."
  - SparkyMcUnicorn 3y ago
    Meet also offers client-side encryption for "Enterprise" level accounts. https://support.google.com/meet/answer/11605714?hl=en&ref_topic=10632347 https://support.google.com/meet/answer/11605714?hl=en&ref_to...
sergiosgc 3y ago
As important as drawing the casus belli is laying out alternatives. What are the alternatives to Zoom, supporting Linux, OSX, mobile and Windows, with decent terms of use?
- berkeleyjunk 3y ago
  The article suggests jitsi and I have had success using it in all the platforms you mentioned.
- Shared404 3y ago
  Jitsi Meet has pretty wide OS support, no experience of it in enterprise though, only personal use.
- tolmasky 3y ago
  The page suggests using Jitsi instead (https://meet.jit.si/ https://meet.jit.si/), which is apparently open source and can be self-hosted. I've never used it, just pointing at what the page suggests.
  - combustify 3y ago
    It's easy enough to host as a small set of containers behind a reverse proxy. Bandwidth is the main bottleneck in my experience, but there is peer to peer to some degree.
  - _joel 3y ago
    Used it loads, it's great.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- jovial_cavalier 3y ago
  Jitsi is amazing. I tried out the desktop client version maybe 10 years ago and it sucked hard. More recently, using their webRTC version has been the smoothest voip experience I've ever had, and it's gratis, and it's open source, and I don't even need to register. It has high quality audio, video, and screen sharing. Honestly, I have no reason to use anything else.
kermatt 3y ago
> Be indemnified by me if it turns out someone else owns the IP or has their rights infringed Does this mean Zoom expects their users to take on the legal burden if someone on a call uses a copyrighted image on a PowerPoint slide?
- AndrewKemendo 3y ago
  100% Make no mistake, zoom will prevail in court or any legal proceedings that may come up around this for at least a few years if not indefinitely. It would take an act of literally Congress or a court ruling that they can’t do this. So, the only way to get into court and win on this is to have zoom “injure” someone (hard to prove), then that injured person has to have enough money to pay a law firm for lengthy trials with zoom including, to be sure, multiple higher court appeals. Bottom line, for zoom to be prevented from doing any of this it’s going to cost probably in the millions of dollars of legal fees and fairly significant numbers of people who were injured by this before anything could start to happen to make something like this not possible.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- afavour 3y ago
  I loathe Zoom but wouldn’t that be the right call? The person who made the infringing content is responsible? We’ve already been through all of this with social networks, no?
  - numbsafari 3y ago
    The question I have is, what if my use during the call could be considered Fair Use in the context and with whatever intention I used it, but what if Zoom then uses it for some other purpose and in some other context that is not Fair Use, have I now taken on the burden of being responsible for however Zoom has chosen to use the content? So, perhaps, I would have been fine using it under the previous terms, but under the new terms, I need to be aware the Zoom may, at any point in the future, utilize it for some other, undisclosed, purpose there's no way that I can use it. How can anyone use Zoom at this point, considering the liability they are foisting onto their customers?
AbraKdabra 3y ago
I came directly to the comments to recommend Jitsi instead. Glad the author made the same early in the article.
- amelius 3y ago
  With the maturing of WebRTC and related technologies, shouldn't it be dead simple by now to create an online video conferencing application that runs completely in the browser?
  - jlokier 3y ago
    With more than two participants, real-time peer to peer video needs a lot more bandwidth on your local internet connection, compared with a hub. That's because you need to send your AV stream to all the other participants in separate streams, instead of one stream to the hub. Same for what you receive, as the hub sends you a composite of the current speaker and thumbnail videos of everyone else. Most people don't have a network at home that can handle, say, sending 50 copies of your AV stream when you're speaking to 50 other participants. With that many, even audio-only is a challenge. There are some clever p2p relay mechanisms you could use in theory to bring the bandwidth down to not grow as much with number of participants (but still a constant factor more than the hub method), but they would add significant latency. For example your AV is sent to one peer, they send it to the next peer, and so on in a chain or tree. This works well for non-real-time AV like p2p distribution of movies, but not real-time meetings. If multicast IP worked over the internet at large that would help but it doesn't work. Even if it did it wouldn't be enough for the full-vs-thumbnails continuous renegotiation needed to keep download bandwidth steady, nor could it do per-user quality-vs-rate adaptation.
- _joel 3y ago
  Good luck to all those that have been trying to convince people to get off Zoom at $WORK (it's not that simple...). This should add some fuel to the fire.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
EGreg 3y ago
OK big question If Jitsi doesn't require a user account, how do they prevent a bunch of random bots using up all their resources with sybil attacks? How do they pay for all that bandwidth, for TURN servers etc? What are the economics of it basically
- inglor 3y ago
  It probably does STUN but not TURN and relies on the actual data going through P2P, that's what most services that are free do and for a lot of orgs/cases it works pretty well.
  - _joel 3y ago
    This, there's no MCU either, all P2P
    - EGreg 3y ago
      So with no TURN, how does Jitsi work with people behind a firewall / NAT?
      - _joel 3y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STUN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STUN
        EGreg 3y ago
        I don't think you understand my question. STUN is only for setting up the connection. With Trickle ICE etc. But after that, who actually proxies the video that is being sent between the WebRTC endpoints? You need TURN servers for that! Without them, people behind a firewall wouldn't be able to actually receive any audio/video streams from Jitsi. So how would it work without TURN?
        inglor 3y ago
mcny 3y ago
Between this and the "RTO or GTFO" story going around on Blind, my new conspiracy theory is there is some kind of power struggle going on at zoom leadership and the senior leadership team is intent on burning zoom to the ground. https://vimeo.com/851503362 https://vimeo.com/851503362
- esafak 3y ago
  Demanding RTO is a very bad look for a company whose lifeblood is remote work.
martinclayton 3y ago
So what might previously have been fair use of copyrighted material in a "private" call is now impossible on zoom?
arun-mani-j 3y ago
While we are it, please don't conduct the meeting in MS Teams unless you are 100% sure that none of the attendees will use Firefox. (Brave also didn't work but refreshing multiple times worked, don't know, why MS wants to pinpoint Edge or Chrome for Teams)
- marcosdumay 3y ago
  Why? If it's for any technical reason, I've been using Teams in Firefox for many months already, and meetings run just fine.
  - prmoustache 3y ago
    I tried once to connect to teams on firefox mobile in a private tab just to send a simple message (not a video call) and tell my coworkers I had a medical emergency and was heading to an hospital. After passing my company's azure SSO login prompts all I got was an error message I had to use Chrome or Mirosoft Edge
    - Bu11etmagnet 3y ago
      Firefox mobile is useless. I tried to use it. I really tried. Finally I had to uninstall it to preserve my sanity.
      - prmoustache 3y ago
        This was a message fron the app, not a failure on firefox mobile's part and I didn't expect any videocall to work, just to be able to send a message in a chat.
  - arun-mani-j 3y ago
    Huh, I tried it last week and it said it doesn't support Firefox...
    - rejectfinite 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
xeestenciel 3y ago
It is worth mentioning that these terms of service (specifically subsection 10.2) are completely illegal under EU's GDPR. It is a matter of time before someone takes them to court.
- pulse7 3y ago
  That's true. But it seems they will ignore it and do it anyway...
gruez 3y ago
>Be indemnified by me if it turns out someone else owns the IP or has their rights infringed (for example to confidential materials everyone on the call is entitled to review). IANAL but that's not quite what the terms say. >25. INDEMNIFICATION >To the extent not prohibited by applicable Law, you agree to indemnify, defend, and hold Zoom and its affiliates and each of our licensors and suppliers (“Indemnified Parties”) harmless, including any officers, directors, employees, shareholders, members, consultants, and agents of the Indemnified Parties, from any third party allegation, claim, proceeding, liability, damage, or cost (including reasonable attorneys’ fees) arising out of or related to (i) your or your End User’s use of the Services or Software, (ii) your or your End User’s breach of this Agreement or violation of applicable Law, (iii) your or your End User’s infringement or violation of any Proprietary Rights or other right of any person or entity, (iv) your relationship with your End User or any dispute between you and your End User, or (v) a personal injury or property damage to a third party relating to your or your End User’s acts or omissions (emphasis mine) You'd really have to stretch the definition of "your or your End User’s use of the Services or Software" to include zoom running their AI training (unbeknownst to the user) for it to be included. What this clause is intended to cover is cases like you using zoom to commit some sort of crime (eg. streaming movies/sports matches), and zoom gets used along with you.
- hiatus 3y ago
  > arising out of or related to > your or your End User’s infringement or violation of any Proprietary Rights or other right of any person or entity
  - gruez 3y ago
    If you're authorized to access the data, it's not infringement. Again, this is if you're using zoom to stream Disney movies or whatever, and Disney decides to sue you and zoom. If you're screensharing confidential company documents you're authorized to view, this will certainly not apply to you. If for whatever reason your company is getting you to screenshare third party documents that you're not authorized to view (eg. confidential documents from a competitor), you should really reconsider who you're working for.
dealuromanet 3y ago
Time to go open source and self-hosted or peer to peer on everything we can. Teach your loved ones and friends the same.
- somat 3y ago
  As a hint on how to self host I can suggest galene. Now there is a caveat in that It turns out that seeing someone while talking to them does not actually provide any value add(actually it is a net negative) to me and my normal non video chat go-to's(cough mumble) have proved good enough. so I don't really use it. But it was very easy to build on openbsd, which is a plus in my book, and the documentation is pretty good at explaining various scaling setups. from one idiot who likes to run servers(me) to full on video chat as a service(zoomish). https://galene.org/ https://galene.org/
alexlmiller 3y ago
The indemnification for IP is a standard term that exists in all SaaS terms. What it's saying is "if you upload copyrighted/infringing material to our service and someone sues us because of it, you have to pay our legal costs since we had nothing to do with it". This is a pretty reasonable thing, you're the one who uploaded the material, you're responsible for it, especially since zoom isn't checking/filtering what you upload/share.
- ranting-moth 3y ago
  It totally stops being a reasonable thing when the content is used to train AI. I don't think you can discuss/use company's IP anymore on a Zoom call. Or at least if you do, zoom's AI will be able to reproduce it and it will be YOUR fault.
- elaus 3y ago
  It might be a standard term, but this is still a big reason not to use Zoom if you expect that any copyrighted or NDA'ed material will be shared. Zoom says they might use this data to train their AI. If the AI produces a close-enough copy of copyrighted material or if it spews out company secrets, someone _will_ sue Zoom for this.
- stronglikedan 3y ago
  I don't think it's reasonable that a SaaS should be able to train their AI on anything that is uploaded (if you're paying for the service). In fact, I don't think it's reasonable that they should even have access to view what you're uploading and sharing in private meetings. If neither of those were true, then they wouldn't have to worry about IP infringement.
  - lifeinthevoid 3y ago
    Zoom End-to-End encryption should theoretically not allow Zoom to see any of the content no?
    - bigfishrunning 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
aparnabzoom 3y ago
Hi there, I'm the COO of Zoom. We currently do not use audio, video or chat content to train AI models and we would not do so without customer consent. Please see our blog https://blog.zoom.us/zooms-term-service-ai/ https://blog.zoom.us/zooms-term-service-ai/
- aparnabzoom 3y ago
  Based on feedback from you all, we’ve updated our terms of service (in section 10.4) to further confirm that we will not use audio, video, or chat customer content to train our artificial intelligence models without your consent. https://blog.zoom.us/zooms-term-service-ai/ https://blog.zoom.us/zooms-term-service-ai/
  - rexreed 3y ago
    There's definitely more that can be done in terms of setting trust with your users, partners, employers, and suppliers - I posted a comment elsewhere on whether or not you have a posted and shared Trustworthy AI policy, and something that is used to guide internal AI development. Happy to email that to you as well.
- wintermutestwin 3y ago
  Weasel words. "We don't use your data to train AI models" (but we can pass it to another entity to do so) "we would not do so without customer consent" (...and everyone who uses our service has consented to anything we want them to in our convoluted ToS. What you should have said is: "Zoom doesn't use audio, video or chat content to do anything but transmit it to the parties that are logged in to the meeting." I frequently have to use Zoom for communications that are privileged by law. I wonder when the class action will happen?
- whoomp12342 3y ago
  Hi COO, of zoom, when people leave or join our zoom meetings the CHIME does not work when the host has left audio. this makes our business really hard to operate. as we rely on your awesome product. HALP
- 3y ago
apocalyptic0n3 3y ago
I understand that people are (rightfully) upset by these terms. This is the first post I've seen saying they're rejecting Zoom calls, but I've seen plenty of comments on HN over the last few days on this topic saying roughly the same. My question is: what are you doing for work where you can just decline any invitation that comes from a specific service? That's not realistic at all for most people. Is there a solution for those people?
- barbazoo 3y ago
  As always, I'd take what people are saying with a grain of salt. It might not be work related calls they're declining either.
- rolph 3y ago
  a conference call
- purpleblue 3y ago
  If this gets big, most companies won't like the idea of their internal company calls being used to train AI, and they will switch off ASAP.
  - tensor 3y ago
    Despite the language, I have a very hard time believing that Zoom is actually trying to train a generative AI on private video calls. If I had to guess this is there so that they can train adjacent services such as malware scanners for shared files or possibly their captioning service using small snippets of audio. I'd still prefer it if they had far tighter language and clarity on how they use user data, but the tech crowd feels like it's off in conspiracy land. If there is any actual evidence that they are using large amounts of private call data to train a generative AI then I'd really like to see that.
    - jlokier 3y ago
      It's a strange mixture, and it's anticipating future needs as well as current things like malware scanning. Probably Zoom and all the other mainstream meeting services will have to use AIs on audio and video streams in due course, in an arms race against other AIs being used to generate audio and video spam, fake job interview candidates, scam calls from people that look and sound like your own family, and such things. On the other hand, who wants their daily standups scrutinised by facial sentiment analysis and posted to monthly management reports, which is the sort of thing it seems Microsoft might do. I don't think Zoom is at fault for wanting or needing to use AIs or plan to, on the streams. They might even be ahead of the game. But their communication about it is rather weasely at the moment, and their COO and CISO comments on here don't help with that.
jsnell 3y ago
Related discussion from yesterday (1500 votes, 480 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37021160 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37021160
hdjjhhvvhga 3y ago
Tangentially related: does anybody know which of the teleconferencing solution has the best audio quality? I'm looking into live music streaming and Zoom/Google Meet seem to offer subpar sound quality, optimizing for latency and using other aspects like noise reduction.
KingOfCoders 3y ago
My problem as a coach is, everything else is bad. Google Meet video quality feels like the 90s, they optimize for traffic costs. MS Teams is not easily usable from a meeting URL, but quality is higher than Google Meet. Other offers are often unreliable or low quality. When working with a trainer for my language/pronunciation I also found out that many solutions have abysmal sound quality, Zoom is best by far.
- tempnow987 3y ago
  Yep - we've tried most (and have teams and meet FREE). Jitsi - core functionality issues with video quality tied to network setups perhaps make it a no go. If you work with a lot of folks for short bits of time everyone knows how to get on and work a zoom call. Teams has weird permissions issues, consumer vs business teams, and is forced on so many people that they auto close it (reminds me a bit of the IE pushiness which can be a turn off). Google Meet started auto-adding links to meetings - so most folks ignore a google meet link because they don't think it's a real meeting (and 90% of time it isn't).
  - yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
    > Google Meet started auto-adding links to meetings You can disable that default company wide and force people to manually add it if desired.
    - tempnow987 3y ago
      The problem is a fair number don't do this. It's super annoying - why not do an opt-in or even a prompted opt-in to keep this to folks actually using meet maybe based on actual meet usage?
      - yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
        Oh sure, I don't intend to defend the default of enabling it, just trying to suggest a mitigation that might at least help internally within a single company.
b8 3y ago
Dr. Stallman is right again.
amelius 3y ago
I feel like we are dangerously close to the situation where companies don't even put this in the ToS. "Better to ask for forgiveness than for permission." See also Uber, who broke the rules and got away with it, and in fact built their empire on top of breaking the law. We should not let companies get away with this. In fact, CEOs of such companies should face prison time. Otherwise it would be too easy to steal your user's data, let your company go bankrupt and start a new company based on the stolen data.
- lucideer 3y ago
  > "Better to ask for forgiveness than for permission." Thankfully we're starting to see legislation being rolled out in a lot of areas with reasonably large penalties for this approach (e.g. 4% of the company's global revenue for the EU).
  - amelius 3y ago
    Like I mentioned, I don't think that fees are sufficient because you just steal your users' data, pay the fees, and if you go bankrupt you just use the data to start a new company.
- numbsafari 3y ago
  I think it is worse than that. I think it is already happening. At the very least, it is happening internally in R&D projects and there will be a raft a roll-outs. How many of those will be floated quietly for "testing" purposes before being rolled out in a public way? Will ToS be updated to reflect it? We have already seen with Microsoft, that they are more than willing to implement and train these kinds of systems and roll them out without any kind of opt-in or up-front disclosure. And if you don't like it, you can just stop using O365, GitHub, Azure, etc. Good luck with that. You've got to convince the higher-ups that this is a real issue that they should absolutely care about. For many organizations, you just aren't going to get traction there because they likely own a bunch of MS stock and are happy to see the value extracted from their own company if it boosts their net worth in other ways.
lucideer 3y ago
I see 4 competitors in this space (consumer video-conferencing SaaS): - Zoom - Google Meet - MS Teams - Jitsi (free) I try and avoid Google products where I can but it seems like the least worst option here (I use Jitsi when I can but it's limited). Is there a 5th option out there? I have tried Discord, it's reasonable, but the UX is kinda crazy for anyone not used to it - very hard to convince non-gamers to use it.
- aembleton 3y ago
  How many are usually on your calls? Signal or WhatsApp might be good enough for you.
- Zambyte 3y ago
  In what way do you find Jitsi limited? Perhaps BigBlueButton would be another reasonable option?
  - lucideer 3y ago
    Jitsi's free service disables video to "save bandwidth" if you have any reasonable amount of participants (3+ in my experience), and doesn't allow you to re-enable it. Their paid service allows you to tweak this but it starts at $100/mo. Have never tried BBB & I'm starting to see a lot of folk recommending it here now as I read through the comments... is it available as a service or is it purely a self-host option (website appears to imply the latter at first but I haven't dug into it yet).
    - gjsman-1000 3y ago
      Self-host, but you can get hosting through its developer, Blindside Networks (terrible name for a company). https://blindsidenetworks.com https://blindsidenetworks.com
      - lucideer 3y ago
        Ah. In that case, not really the "space" I'm referring to. Was really asking if there's any other non-self-hosted competitors to these services out there?
whoomp12342 3y ago
Too bad Jitsi isn't hipaa compliant
- SparkyMcUnicorn 3y ago
  But Jitsi does support E2EE for audio, video, and screen sharing. https://jitsi.org/security/ https://jitsi.org/security/
michael_adams12 3y ago
This is Michael Adams, Zoom’s CISO. I want to reiterate our thanks for your feedback and emphasize our continuing commitment to protecting our customers’ data as we make exciting improvements to Zoom products. At Zoom, we do not use customer audio, video, and chat to train our generative AI models without customer consent. You can learn more about enabling generative AI features, consent, and notice here: https://blog.zoom.us/zooms-term-service-ai/ https://blog.zoom.us/zooms-term-service-ai/
- michael_adams12 3y ago
  Thanks very much for your continued interest and feedback. Our updated blog clarifies our approach: https://blog.zoom.us/zooms-term-service-ai/ https://blog.zoom.us/zooms-term-service-ai/ Most importantly - we’ve updated our terms of service (in section 10.4) to further confirm that we will not use audio, video, or chat customer content to train our artificial intelligence models without your consent.
  - saltcured 3y ago
    I think a large number of people here will still find these terms lacking. Specifically, we will reject the idea that one account admin can make a consent for all users. I would much prefer to see users empowered to not just be "notified" of an account admin's decision but to have per-user consent. Regardless of what my employer (or a collaborator's employer) might think, I do not consent to feeding my voice, video, or screenshare content into AI training. And I think there should be a middle ground between "tolerate the admin's decision" and "don't participate". I understand certain scenarios require this, such as recording of all contributions to an important meeting. But, I don't think you should apply this heavy-handed approach to other derivative use. A user should be able to communicate with peers without being coerced into consent for all other usage an account admin might be interested in...
- user6723 3y ago
  The world is waiting for your user-facing legal agreements to reflect this. Explicitly stating that user data will not be used unless someone affirmatively opts-in in the agreement would be a good step.
maldev 3y ago
Zoom already has multiple offerings with different privacy policies. For example Zoom.us (Zoom for US Government) vs Regular Zoom. Wouldn't be surprised if this comes later in different tiers of pricing and data privacy.
kornhole 3y ago
Jitsi is great but has limitations. I use Nextcloud Talk. Nextcloud is self hosted and includes many apps that can be easily activated. Talk is full featured and includes mobile apps that allow people to call each other directly along with everything you would expect from a messenger. Federation with the 400K+ NC installations is WIP.
sylens 3y ago
I actually think Google Meet is a decent product. Feels lightweight and is browser-first
ibejoeb 3y ago
From 10.4: > Notwithstanding the above, Zoom will not use audio, video or chat Customer Content to train our artificial intelligence models without your consent. Right. And you've given consent by agreeing to the terms in the first sentence: > You agree to grant and hereby grant Zoom [an absolute] license and all other rights...to perform all acts with respect to the Customer Content...
- sieste 3y ago
  This sounds like a joke, how can anyone write such ToS with a straight face? It's like "1.1 We value our customers and treat them with respect, unless we say we don't. 1.2 We don't."
cosmojg 3y ago
Ironically, my company can't use Jitsi because it isn't a certified "secure" platform per FedRAMP[1]. If Jitsi were ever granted FedRAMP certification, I'd be charging full steam ahead to get my company to switch. [1] https://media.defense.gov/2020/Aug/14/2002477667/-1/-1/0/CSI_%20SELECTING_AND_USING_COLLABORATION_SERVICES_SECURELY_FULL_20200814.PDF https://media.defense.gov/2020/Aug/14/2002477667/-1/-1/0/CSI...
esafak 3y ago
I was waiting for this Zoom development to hit the headlines so I could share it with my friends. It's out now: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/07/zoom-ai-tools-trained-using-some-customer-data.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/07/zoom-ai-tools-trained-using-...
sieste 3y ago
Does MS Teams have similar Terms?
aparnabzoom 3y ago
Hi there, this is Aparna, COO of Zoom. We’ve updated our terms of service (in section 10.4) to further confirm that we will not use audio, video, or chat customer content to train our artificial intelligence models without your consent. Please take a look. https://blog.zoom.us/zooms-term-service-ai/ https://blog.zoom.us/zooms-term-service-ai/

282 points by LaSombra 3y ago

I recommend Jitsi over Zoom for lots of reasons, but "AI" isn't some magical new danger point. * Most of the legal terms are standard for internet services. * Any and all unencrypted internet communication will be monitored by the services hosting that communication. * If we replace "AI" with "automation tools", then this is a nothing burger. Or to put it another way, Does anyone really think Zoom (or other internet services) aren't running automated tools to catch/ block/ report child porn? How do folks think those automation tools are trained? If you don't want service providers monitoring your communication, ENCRYPT IT. Otherwise, it doesn't matter if they're using the "AI" boogeyman or older automation tools.

korginator 3y ago

At work, there is a whole process and checklists for "approved" software. Zoom is one of them. Most Microsoft software are in this approved list. Our work laptops are locked down and you can't install anything. Our development laptops are a bit more open, but they are monitored as well. However this is not the issue. How do you get a whole organization of several thousand people to move from zoom to another platform? In my experience, this has only happened because the provider simply could not meet the QoS/ToS, or they were priced out. Also, most people just don't care. They just want something working well. We've got Cisco webex and Microsoft teams, but guess what most people prefer? Zoom. Because "it just works better".

smithcoin 3y ago

Are meet’s terms any better?

ethbr0 3y ago
And I'm curious what Team's current terms are too.
- golergka 3y ago
  I would be very surprised to find out they're not legally obliged to guarantee dumpster fire netcode and worst possible UI out of all the competitors.
- inglor 3y ago
  If no one answers I'll ask internally (I'm in Microsoft but just an engineer and not in teams), I can tell you that in our org we don't have access to customer data, actual customer data is encrypted anyway and every access to a production machine is recorded, audited and has to be justified legally (and is very rare to the point I haven't _actually_ seen it done except to literally learn how to go through the process on a machine with no dat). I'm also curious what the ToS says about teams, if it allows it I'd be pretty disgusted and I was very surprised Zoom does this..
  - ethbr0 3y ago
    I get it from Zoom's perspective: it's a core differentiator and strategic future advantage for them. I think it's going to lose them more customers than make them money... but we'll see. MS is a more interesting case, because they have a tradition of understanding enterprise concerns, and don't really need the data from Teams given their product portfolio. But, common strategic sense often doesn't stop tactical, myopic product manager blunders, so I am curious.
    - michaelcampbell 3y ago
      > I think it's going to lose them more customers than make them money... but we'll see. We will indeed. Given the vast, vast majority of users' reading of TOS in the first place, much less understanding them, this to me seems very unlikely.
aaomidi 3y ago
Technically you can turn on e2ee on Meet.
dealuromanet 3y ago
This is what I found from searching, but we do need a more clear and direct answer from Google. https://support.google.com/meet/answer/9852160#zippy=%2Cprivacy-transparency https://support.google.com/meet/answer/9852160#zippy=%2Cpriv... "Google does not store video, audio, or chat data unless a meeting participant initiates a recording during the Meet session."
- SparkyMcUnicorn 3y ago
  Meet also offers client-side encryption for "Enterprise" level accounts. https://support.google.com/meet/answer/11605714?hl=en&ref_topic=10632347 https://support.google.com/meet/answer/11605714?hl=en&ref_to...

sergiosgc 3y ago

As important as drawing the casus belli is laying out alternatives. What are the alternatives to Zoom, supporting Linux, OSX, mobile and Windows, with decent terms of use?

berkeleyjunk 3y ago
The article suggests jitsi and I have had success using it in all the platforms you mentioned.
Shared404 3y ago
Jitsi Meet has pretty wide OS support, no experience of it in enterprise though, only personal use.
tolmasky 3y ago
The page suggests using Jitsi instead (https://meet.jit.si/ https://meet.jit.si/), which is apparently open source and can be self-hosted. I've never used it, just pointing at what the page suggests.
- combustify 3y ago
  It's easy enough to host as a small set of containers behind a reverse proxy. Bandwidth is the main bottleneck in my experience, but there is peer to peer to some degree.
- _joel 3y ago
  Used it loads, it's great.
deleted 3y ago
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jovial_cavalier 3y ago
Jitsi is amazing. I tried out the desktop client version maybe 10 years ago and it sucked hard. More recently, using their webRTC version has been the smoothest voip experience I've ever had, and it's gratis, and it's open source, and I don't even need to register. It has high quality audio, video, and screen sharing. Honestly, I have no reason to use anything else.

kermatt 3y ago

> Be indemnified by me if it turns out someone else owns the IP or has their rights infringed Does this mean Zoom expects their users to take on the legal burden if someone on a call uses a copyrighted image on a PowerPoint slide?

AndrewKemendo 3y ago
100% Make no mistake, zoom will prevail in court or any legal proceedings that may come up around this for at least a few years if not indefinitely. It would take an act of literally Congress or a court ruling that they can’t do this. So, the only way to get into court and win on this is to have zoom “injure” someone (hard to prove), then that injured person has to have enough money to pay a law firm for lengthy trials with zoom including, to be sure, multiple higher court appeals. Bottom line, for zoom to be prevented from doing any of this it’s going to cost probably in the millions of dollars of legal fees and fairly significant numbers of people who were injured by this before anything could start to happen to make something like this not possible.
deleted 3y ago
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afavour 3y ago
I loathe Zoom but wouldn’t that be the right call? The person who made the infringing content is responsible? We’ve already been through all of this with social networks, no?
- numbsafari 3y ago
  The question I have is, what if my use during the call could be considered Fair Use in the context and with whatever intention I used it, but what if Zoom then uses it for some other purpose and in some other context that is not Fair Use, have I now taken on the burden of being responsible for however Zoom has chosen to use the content? So, perhaps, I would have been fine using it under the previous terms, but under the new terms, I need to be aware the Zoom may, at any point in the future, utilize it for some other, undisclosed, purpose there's no way that I can use it. How can anyone use Zoom at this point, considering the liability they are foisting onto their customers?

AbraKdabra 3y ago

I came directly to the comments to recommend Jitsi instead. Glad the author made the same early in the article.

amelius 3y ago
With the maturing of WebRTC and related technologies, shouldn't it be dead simple by now to create an online video conferencing application that runs completely in the browser?
- jlokier 3y ago
  With more than two participants, real-time peer to peer video needs a lot more bandwidth on your local internet connection, compared with a hub. That's because you need to send your AV stream to all the other participants in separate streams, instead of one stream to the hub. Same for what you receive, as the hub sends you a composite of the current speaker and thumbnail videos of everyone else. Most people don't have a network at home that can handle, say, sending 50 copies of your AV stream when you're speaking to 50 other participants. With that many, even audio-only is a challenge. There are some clever p2p relay mechanisms you could use in theory to bring the bandwidth down to not grow as much with number of participants (but still a constant factor more than the hub method), but they would add significant latency. For example your AV is sent to one peer, they send it to the next peer, and so on in a chain or tree. This works well for non-real-time AV like p2p distribution of movies, but not real-time meetings. If multicast IP worked over the internet at large that would help but it doesn't work. Even if it did it wouldn't be enough for the full-vs-thumbnails continuous renegotiation needed to keep download bandwidth steady, nor could it do per-user quality-vs-rate adaptation.
_joel 3y ago
Good luck to all those that have been trying to convince people to get off Zoom at $WORK (it's not that simple...). This should add some fuel to the fire.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

EGreg 3y ago

OK big question If Jitsi doesn't require a user account, how do they prevent a bunch of random bots using up all their resources with sybil attacks? How do they pay for all that bandwidth, for TURN servers etc? What are the economics of it basically

inglor 3y ago
It probably does STUN but not TURN and relies on the actual data going through P2P, that's what most services that are free do and for a lot of orgs/cases it works pretty well.
- _joel 3y ago
  This, there's no MCU either, all P2P
  - EGreg 3y ago
    So with no TURN, how does Jitsi work with people behind a firewall / NAT?
    - _joel 3y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STUN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STUN
      - EGreg 3y ago
        I don't think you understand my question. STUN is only for setting up the connection. With Trickle ICE etc. But after that, who actually proxies the video that is being sent between the WebRTC endpoints? You need TURN servers for that! Without them, people behind a firewall wouldn't be able to actually receive any audio/video streams from Jitsi. So how would it work without TURN?
        inglor 3y ago

mcny 3y ago

Between this and the "RTO or GTFO" story going around on Blind, my new conspiracy theory is there is some kind of power struggle going on at zoom leadership and the senior leadership team is intent on burning zoom to the ground. https://vimeo.com/851503362 https://vimeo.com/851503362

esafak 3y ago
Demanding RTO is a very bad look for a company whose lifeblood is remote work.

martinclayton 3y ago

So what might previously have been fair use of copyrighted material in a "private" call is now impossible on zoom?

arun-mani-j 3y ago

While we are it, please don't conduct the meeting in MS Teams unless you are 100% sure that none of the attendees will use Firefox. (Brave also didn't work but refreshing multiple times worked, don't know, why MS wants to pinpoint Edge or Chrome for Teams)

marcosdumay 3y ago
Why? If it's for any technical reason, I've been using Teams in Firefox for many months already, and meetings run just fine.
- prmoustache 3y ago
  I tried once to connect to teams on firefox mobile in a private tab just to send a simple message (not a video call) and tell my coworkers I had a medical emergency and was heading to an hospital. After passing my company's azure SSO login prompts all I got was an error message I had to use Chrome or Mirosoft Edge
  - Bu11etmagnet 3y ago
    Firefox mobile is useless. I tried to use it. I really tried. Finally I had to uninstall it to preserve my sanity.
    - prmoustache 3y ago
      This was a message fron the app, not a failure on firefox mobile's part and I didn't expect any videocall to work, just to be able to send a message in a chat.
- arun-mani-j 3y ago
  Huh, I tried it last week and it said it doesn't support Firefox...
  - rejectfinite 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

xeestenciel 3y ago

It is worth mentioning that these terms of service (specifically subsection 10.2) are completely illegal under EU's GDPR. It is a matter of time before someone takes them to court.

pulse7 3y ago
That's true. But it seems they will ignore it and do it anyway...

gruez 3y ago

>Be indemnified by me if it turns out someone else owns the IP or has their rights infringed (for example to confidential materials everyone on the call is entitled to review). IANAL but that's not quite what the terms say. >25. INDEMNIFICATION >To the extent not prohibited by applicable Law, you agree to indemnify, defend, and hold Zoom and its affiliates and each of our licensors and suppliers (“Indemnified Parties”) harmless, including any officers, directors, employees, shareholders, members, consultants, and agents of the Indemnified Parties, from any third party allegation, claim, proceeding, liability, damage, or cost (including reasonable attorneys’ fees) arising out of or related to (i) your or your End User’s use of the Services or Software, (ii) your or your End User’s breach of this Agreement or violation of applicable Law, (iii) your or your End User’s infringement or violation of any Proprietary Rights or other right of any person or entity, (iv) your relationship with your End User or any dispute between you and your End User, or (v) a personal injury or property damage to a third party relating to your or your End User’s acts or omissions (emphasis mine) You'd really have to stretch the definition of "your or your End User’s use of the Services or Software" to include zoom running their AI training (unbeknownst to the user) for it to be included. What this clause is intended to cover is cases like you using zoom to commit some sort of crime (eg. streaming movies/sports matches), and zoom gets used along with you.

hiatus 3y ago
> arising out of or related to > your or your End User’s infringement or violation of any Proprietary Rights or other right of any person or entity
- gruez 3y ago
  If you're authorized to access the data, it's not infringement. Again, this is if you're using zoom to stream Disney movies or whatever, and Disney decides to sue you and zoom. If you're screensharing confidential company documents you're authorized to view, this will certainly not apply to you. If for whatever reason your company is getting you to screenshare third party documents that you're not authorized to view (eg. confidential documents from a competitor), you should really reconsider who you're working for.

dealuromanet 3y ago

Time to go open source and self-hosted or peer to peer on everything we can. Teach your loved ones and friends the same.

somat 3y ago
As a hint on how to self host I can suggest galene. Now there is a caveat in that It turns out that seeing someone while talking to them does not actually provide any value add(actually it is a net negative) to me and my normal non video chat go-to's(cough mumble) have proved good enough. so I don't really use it. But it was very easy to build on openbsd, which is a plus in my book, and the documentation is pretty good at explaining various scaling setups. from one idiot who likes to run servers(me) to full on video chat as a service(zoomish). https://galene.org/ https://galene.org/

alexlmiller 3y ago

The indemnification for IP is a standard term that exists in all SaaS terms. What it's saying is "if you upload copyrighted/infringing material to our service and someone sues us because of it, you have to pay our legal costs since we had nothing to do with it". This is a pretty reasonable thing, you're the one who uploaded the material, you're responsible for it, especially since zoom isn't checking/filtering what you upload/share.

ranting-moth 3y ago
It totally stops being a reasonable thing when the content is used to train AI. I don't think you can discuss/use company's IP anymore on a Zoom call. Or at least if you do, zoom's AI will be able to reproduce it and it will be YOUR fault.
elaus 3y ago
It might be a standard term, but this is still a big reason not to use Zoom if you expect that any copyrighted or NDA'ed material will be shared. Zoom says they might use this data to train their AI. If the AI produces a close-enough copy of copyrighted material or if it spews out company secrets, someone _will_ sue Zoom for this.
stronglikedan 3y ago
I don't think it's reasonable that a SaaS should be able to train their AI on anything that is uploaded (if you're paying for the service). In fact, I don't think it's reasonable that they should even have access to view what you're uploading and sharing in private meetings. If neither of those were true, then they wouldn't have to worry about IP infringement.
- lifeinthevoid 3y ago
  Zoom End-to-End encryption should theoretically not allow Zoom to see any of the content no?
  - bigfishrunning 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

aparnabzoom 3y ago

Hi there, I'm the COO of Zoom. We currently do not use audio, video or chat content to train AI models and we would not do so without customer consent. Please see our blog https://blog.zoom.us/zooms-term-service-ai/ https://blog.zoom.us/zooms-term-service-ai/

aparnabzoom 3y ago
Based on feedback from you all, we’ve updated our terms of service (in section 10.4) to further confirm that we will not use audio, video, or chat customer content to train our artificial intelligence models without your consent. https://blog.zoom.us/zooms-term-service-ai/ https://blog.zoom.us/zooms-term-service-ai/
- rexreed 3y ago
  There's definitely more that can be done in terms of setting trust with your users, partners, employers, and suppliers - I posted a comment elsewhere on whether or not you have a posted and shared Trustworthy AI policy, and something that is used to guide internal AI development. Happy to email that to you as well.
wintermutestwin 3y ago
Weasel words. "We don't use your data to train AI models" (but we can pass it to another entity to do so) "we would not do so without customer consent" (...and everyone who uses our service has consented to anything we want them to in our convoluted ToS. What you should have said is: "Zoom doesn't use audio, video or chat content to do anything but transmit it to the parties that are logged in to the meeting." I frequently have to use Zoom for communications that are privileged by law. I wonder when the class action will happen?
whoomp12342 3y ago
Hi COO, of zoom, when people leave or join our zoom meetings the CHIME does not work when the host has left audio. this makes our business really hard to operate. as we rely on your awesome product. HALP
3y ago

apocalyptic0n3 3y ago

I understand that people are (rightfully) upset by these terms. This is the first post I've seen saying they're rejecting Zoom calls, but I've seen plenty of comments on HN over the last few days on this topic saying roughly the same. My question is: what are you doing for work where you can just decline any invitation that comes from a specific service? That's not realistic at all for most people. Is there a solution for those people?

barbazoo 3y ago
As always, I'd take what people are saying with a grain of salt. It might not be work related calls they're declining either.
rolph 3y ago
a conference call
purpleblue 3y ago
If this gets big, most companies won't like the idea of their internal company calls being used to train AI, and they will switch off ASAP.
- tensor 3y ago
  Despite the language, I have a very hard time believing that Zoom is actually trying to train a generative AI on private video calls. If I had to guess this is there so that they can train adjacent services such as malware scanners for shared files or possibly their captioning service using small snippets of audio. I'd still prefer it if they had far tighter language and clarity on how they use user data, but the tech crowd feels like it's off in conspiracy land. If there is any actual evidence that they are using large amounts of private call data to train a generative AI then I'd really like to see that.
  - jlokier 3y ago
    It's a strange mixture, and it's anticipating future needs as well as current things like malware scanning. Probably Zoom and all the other mainstream meeting services will have to use AIs on audio and video streams in due course, in an arms race against other AIs being used to generate audio and video spam, fake job interview candidates, scam calls from people that look and sound like your own family, and such things. On the other hand, who wants their daily standups scrutinised by facial sentiment analysis and posted to monthly management reports, which is the sort of thing it seems Microsoft might do. I don't think Zoom is at fault for wanting or needing to use AIs or plan to, on the streams. They might even be ahead of the game. But their communication about it is rather weasely at the moment, and their COO and CISO comments on here don't help with that.

jsnell 3y ago

Related discussion from yesterday (1500 votes, 480 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37021160 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37021160

hdjjhhvvhga 3y ago

Tangentially related: does anybody know which of the teleconferencing solution has the best audio quality? I'm looking into live music streaming and Zoom/Google Meet seem to offer subpar sound quality, optimizing for latency and using other aspects like noise reduction.

KingOfCoders 3y ago

My problem as a coach is, everything else is bad. Google Meet video quality feels like the 90s, they optimize for traffic costs. MS Teams is not easily usable from a meeting URL, but quality is higher than Google Meet. Other offers are often unreliable or low quality. When working with a trainer for my language/pronunciation I also found out that many solutions have abysmal sound quality, Zoom is best by far.

tempnow987 3y ago
Yep - we've tried most (and have teams and meet FREE). Jitsi - core functionality issues with video quality tied to network setups perhaps make it a no go. If you work with a lot of folks for short bits of time everyone knows how to get on and work a zoom call. Teams has weird permissions issues, consumer vs business teams, and is forced on so many people that they auto close it (reminds me a bit of the IE pushiness which can be a turn off). Google Meet started auto-adding links to meetings - so most folks ignore a google meet link because they don't think it's a real meeting (and 90% of time it isn't).
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
  > Google Meet started auto-adding links to meetings You can disable that default company wide and force people to manually add it if desired.
  - tempnow987 3y ago
    The problem is a fair number don't do this. It's super annoying - why not do an opt-in or even a prompted opt-in to keep this to folks actually using meet maybe based on actual meet usage?
    - yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
      Oh sure, I don't intend to defend the default of enabling it, just trying to suggest a mitigation that might at least help internally within a single company.

b8 3y ago

Dr. Stallman is right again.

amelius 3y ago

I feel like we are dangerously close to the situation where companies don't even put this in the ToS. "Better to ask for forgiveness than for permission." See also Uber, who broke the rules and got away with it, and in fact built their empire on top of breaking the law. We should not let companies get away with this. In fact, CEOs of such companies should face prison time. Otherwise it would be too easy to steal your user's data, let your company go bankrupt and start a new company based on the stolen data.

lucideer 3y ago
> "Better to ask for forgiveness than for permission." Thankfully we're starting to see legislation being rolled out in a lot of areas with reasonably large penalties for this approach (e.g. 4% of the company's global revenue for the EU).
- amelius 3y ago
  Like I mentioned, I don't think that fees are sufficient because you just steal your users' data, pay the fees, and if you go bankrupt you just use the data to start a new company.
numbsafari 3y ago
I think it is worse than that. I think it is already happening. At the very least, it is happening internally in R&D projects and there will be a raft a roll-outs. How many of those will be floated quietly for "testing" purposes before being rolled out in a public way? Will ToS be updated to reflect it? We have already seen with Microsoft, that they are more than willing to implement and train these kinds of systems and roll them out without any kind of opt-in or up-front disclosure. And if you don't like it, you can just stop using O365, GitHub, Azure, etc. Good luck with that. You've got to convince the higher-ups that this is a real issue that they should absolutely care about. For many organizations, you just aren't going to get traction there because they likely own a bunch of MS stock and are happy to see the value extracted from their own company if it boosts their net worth in other ways.

lucideer 3y ago

I see 4 competitors in this space (consumer video-conferencing SaaS): - Zoom - Google Meet - MS Teams - Jitsi (free) I try and avoid Google products where I can but it seems like the least worst option here (I use Jitsi when I can but it's limited). Is there a 5th option out there? I have tried Discord, it's reasonable, but the UX is kinda crazy for anyone not used to it - very hard to convince non-gamers to use it.

aembleton 3y ago
How many are usually on your calls? Signal or WhatsApp might be good enough for you.
Zambyte 3y ago
In what way do you find Jitsi limited? Perhaps BigBlueButton would be another reasonable option?
- lucideer 3y ago
  Jitsi's free service disables video to "save bandwidth" if you have any reasonable amount of participants (3+ in my experience), and doesn't allow you to re-enable it. Their paid service allows you to tweak this but it starts at $100/mo. Have never tried BBB & I'm starting to see a lot of folk recommending it here now as I read through the comments... is it available as a service or is it purely a self-host option (website appears to imply the latter at first but I haven't dug into it yet).
  - gjsman-1000 3y ago
    Self-host, but you can get hosting through its developer, Blindside Networks (terrible name for a company). https://blindsidenetworks.com https://blindsidenetworks.com
    - lucideer 3y ago
      Ah. In that case, not really the "space" I'm referring to. Was really asking if there's any other non-self-hosted competitors to these services out there?

whoomp12342 3y ago

Too bad Jitsi isn't hipaa compliant

SparkyMcUnicorn 3y ago
But Jitsi does support E2EE for audio, video, and screen sharing. https://jitsi.org/security/ https://jitsi.org/security/

michael_adams12 3y ago

This is Michael Adams, Zoom’s CISO. I want to reiterate our thanks for your feedback and emphasize our continuing commitment to protecting our customers’ data as we make exciting improvements to Zoom products. At Zoom, we do not use customer audio, video, and chat to train our generative AI models without customer consent. You can learn more about enabling generative AI features, consent, and notice here: https://blog.zoom.us/zooms-term-service-ai/ https://blog.zoom.us/zooms-term-service-ai/

michael_adams12 3y ago
Thanks very much for your continued interest and feedback. Our updated blog clarifies our approach: https://blog.zoom.us/zooms-term-service-ai/ https://blog.zoom.us/zooms-term-service-ai/ Most importantly - we’ve updated our terms of service (in section 10.4) to further confirm that we will not use audio, video, or chat customer content to train our artificial intelligence models without your consent.
- saltcured 3y ago
  I think a large number of people here will still find these terms lacking. Specifically, we will reject the idea that one account admin can make a consent for all users. I would much prefer to see users empowered to not just be "notified" of an account admin's decision but to have per-user consent. Regardless of what my employer (or a collaborator's employer) might think, I do not consent to feeding my voice, video, or screenshare content into AI training. And I think there should be a middle ground between "tolerate the admin's decision" and "don't participate". I understand certain scenarios require this, such as recording of all contributions to an important meeting. But, I don't think you should apply this heavy-handed approach to other derivative use. A user should be able to communicate with peers without being coerced into consent for all other usage an account admin might be interested in...
user6723 3y ago
The world is waiting for your user-facing legal agreements to reflect this. Explicitly stating that user data will not be used unless someone affirmatively opts-in in the agreement would be a good step.

maldev 3y ago

Zoom already has multiple offerings with different privacy policies. For example Zoom.us (Zoom for US Government) vs Regular Zoom. Wouldn't be surprised if this comes later in different tiers of pricing and data privacy.

kornhole 3y ago

Jitsi is great but has limitations. I use Nextcloud Talk. Nextcloud is self hosted and includes many apps that can be easily activated. Talk is full featured and includes mobile apps that allow people to call each other directly along with everything you would expect from a messenger. Federation with the 400K+ NC installations is WIP.

sylens 3y ago

I actually think Google Meet is a decent product. Feels lightweight and is browser-first

ibejoeb 3y ago

From 10.4: > Notwithstanding the above, Zoom will not use audio, video or chat Customer Content to train our artificial intelligence models without your consent. Right. And you've given consent by agreeing to the terms in the first sentence: > You agree to grant and hereby grant Zoom [an absolute] license and all other rights...to perform all acts with respect to the Customer Content...

sieste 3y ago
This sounds like a joke, how can anyone write such ToS with a straight face? It's like "1.1 We value our customers and treat them with respect, unless we say we don't. 1.2 We don't."

cosmojg 3y ago

Ironically, my company can't use Jitsi because it isn't a certified "secure" platform per FedRAMP[1]. If Jitsi were ever granted FedRAMP certification, I'd be charging full steam ahead to get my company to switch. [1] https://media.defense.gov/2020/Aug/14/2002477667/-1/-1/0/CSI_%20SELECTING_AND_USING_COLLABORATION_SERVICES_SECURELY_FULL_20200814.PDF https://media.defense.gov/2020/Aug/14/2002477667/-1/-1/0/CSI...

esafak 3y ago

I was waiting for this Zoom development to hit the headlines so I could share it with my friends. It's out now: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/07/zoom-ai-tools-trained-using-some-customer-data.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/07/zoom-ai-tools-trained-using-...

sieste 3y ago

Does MS Teams have similar Terms?

aparnabzoom 3y ago

Hi there, this is Aparna, COO of Zoom. We’ve updated our terms of service (in section 10.4) to further confirm that we will not use audio, video, or chat customer content to train our artificial intelligence models without your consent. Please take a look. https://blog.zoom.us/zooms-term-service-ai/ https://blog.zoom.us/zooms-term-service-ai/