Just to offer a counter point: this crisis feels mostly manufactured. Zoom is under a microscope that almost all other comm software would fail just as horribly, if not worse. Maybe the majority of users here were too young to remember, but Skype was far, far worse, and did not have same positive response and seriousness Zoom seems to be having.
That said, competition and alternatives is good!
I disagree that this feels manufactured. It's due to a catalyst - one that has brought on a lot of positive and negative attention to Zoom. The evidence is all there and it is factual. Zoom has misrepresented their encryption on both the implementation and operational sides. However to say that only the bad press Zoom has received is "manufactured" is a misrepresentation.
I'm not sure I follow the Skype comparison. If you're talking about Skype historically (and it seems you are) - then that was before a lot of the strong privacy and encryption conversations were being had in the larger audience of consumers. Setting this comparison is a slippery slope. Yes, we know Skype was used and abused by nation state actors - but for the time encryption was not the norm. Things have changed and today misrepresenting encryption and privacy is a much more grave sin that consumers are more concerned about. Businesses lying or misrepresenting it should have been held accountable back then - but they only finally are now.
> Things have changed and today misrepresenting encryption and privacy is a much more grave sin that consumers are more concerned about.
Not disagreeing but I think we have to remember that 99% of consumers are not HN tech gurus and really don’t care. They only care about the quality of the product/experience, and clearly Zoom has topped the market on those (similar to slack for enterprise chat).
Consumers, in my opinion, have a much more vested interest in privacy and security today. If we look at Apple [0][1] - they've invested significantly in wrapping their brand around it. To say that "99% of consumers are not HN tech gurus and really don't care" seems, to me, an unfounded perspective. Again, in my opinion - but factually we have a lot of evidence to support the contrary.
> then that was before a lot of the strong privacy and encryption conversations were being had in the larger audience of consumers
That is an extremely. weak defense. There were plenty of other companies taking user security seriously. Many of our encryption standards and security certifications in use today were created in the 90s and 00s.
Defense? I think you misread what I stated. Sure, many encryption standards and certifications were created in the 90s and 00s. That doesn't mean all of them stood the test of time - lest we hash out if your perspective is that 3DES is still viable. What I stated was in response to the parent and pointing out, as you quoted:
> "If you're talking about Skype historically (and it seems you are) - then that was before a lot of the strong privacy and encryption conversations were being had in the larger audience of consumers."
Note that I was speaking of "consumers" for the point in time referenced. Many of those consumers were not aware of why they should care about privacy or encryption, you seem to be conflating industry and consumers - of which I was making a much more specific point. This point is obvious when you look at the trend of total encrypted traffic volume which was not the majority in the 90s or 2000s compared to today - of which it is. For reference (and to put this in perspective) Facebook didn't start rolling out required encryption until 2012 [0] - less than 10 years ago. Today most of us couldn't fathom logging into a service that wasn't encrypted. So, while I feel you took my statement out of context - I'm also pointing out that consumer encryption wasn't generally taken seriously in consumer oriented services until into the 2010s.
Signal went under a microscope during a critical time (Snowden leaks) and not only succeeded but changed how everyone else was doing it or at least set a new bar. Which then proceeded to help hundreds of millions of people as apps like WhatsApp adopted their crypto.
If major plays like WhtatsApp being capable of figuring it out and adopting it with hundreds of millions of users, then I fully believe any-sized company can where it won't kill their business model.
It doesn't need to be a part of Zoom's business model to watch everything so there's no excuse not to. And after that people will stop bringing this up every time their brand is named.
Not sure it was quite flawless, but it has gone from being my first-choice platform to last place. I fear that LinkedIn is going down a similar path, post-acquisition.
Yeah no. Skype was certainly good at the time, but compared to discord, slack, hangouts, or pretty much any contemporary chat app/suite, it didn't stand up.
Also as another user mentioned, skype was a DOS vector for individual users.
A number of Internet personalities such as Twitch streamers were doxxed with a little help from Skype IPs. Maybe impossible to avoid without centralized hubs or an overlay network like Tor.
It is curious how Skype was started by Kazaa engineers basically to find a legit use for their p2p streaming tech, and now it's not even p2p anymore.
> Just to offer a counter point: this crisis feels mostly manufactured. Zoom is under a microscope that almost all other comm software would fail just as horribly, if not worse
I fail to see why this matters; let's assume this is true and everything else is just as bad (and a lot of stuff is just as bad, so this may be a fair assumption): the answer is that they should be put under the microscope too and forced to clean up their act and stop lying to users or putting them at risk unnecessarily with bad development processes. The answer is not to just say "meh, everyone else is just as bad" and keep using Zoom.
If all other communication software will fail just as horribly under the same scrutiny, then it’s fine. With the quarantine, we definitely have the time to make something better.
