At this point if we go back to messenger pigeons I half expect to see spam tied to the other leg.
this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2023
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Privacy
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I love how there’s a whole generation of people who think that we went straight from email to to Slack and Discord. There was a whole, vibrant, ecosystem of XMPP and IRC services before these walled gardens showed up and supplanted open protocols in order to data mine their users.
I’m preaching to the choir in here, obviously, but we’ve been preaching this gospel for years and nobody cared. Not looking so crazy now. Unfortunately, the damage is done. Privacy has lost.
Privacy has been beaten to a bloody pulp, but the fight doesn't need to be called yet. Don't give up, keep telling everyone you can. I know things are looking low right now, but every person you reach matters.
In the case of Zoom, an approach that could actually work is having every step of the solution already completed if you've got an employer trying to push Zoom on employees. Make sure you can clearly state here's the problem, here's why it's dangerous for the company, here's a great alternative, here's why it's safest for the company, and here's how you install it. Reach out to the IT dept if you're not the IT dept to get them on board. If the advice is coming from multiple employees, that will help your case.
I have gone back to using XMPP and have my family and friends using it. There has been a uptik in development of this protocol and the mobile apps have gotten way better. Facebook, whats app, google, and countless others all started with XMPP/jabber and they all could talk to each other. That is until they walled them off to try and force everyone on to there app. Its so dumb that we had a federated chat system that was taking hold until the big tech players got involed and sucked up the users then turned off federation. Chat could and still can be like email if there is critical mass on one of these federated protocols so everyone will start useing it.
My phone number is run though my XMPP server, no matter what phone or computer I use I can access my phone number. Hell I could drop my phone plan all together, if I wanted to and just use wifi for calls. 90% of the time im connected to wifi anyways. I use jmp.chat and the android app cheogram you should check it out.
How did you set up your phone number to go through your own XMPP server? That sounds awesome.
Sorry to disappoint you, but a can of spam may be too heavy for a pigeon.
It could grip it by the husk.
Laden or unladen?
(Sorry, I only vaguely remember the sketch)
What you're saying is: It's not a question of where he grips it; it's a simple matter of weight ratios?
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Zoom was always a gigantic shitshow and borderline illigal in a lot of countrys.
More than borderline, but no court ever gives a fuck
Schools in my country are not allowed to use it at all, so they kinda do.
That was admin decision, not courts. But anyway looks like your location has [NOT] been greased properly but don't worry I am sure some clown is working on it as week speak. Those juice public sector contracts are prime time for corruption.
If you need teleconferencing with screen share I highly recommend Jitsi. Easy to set up, pretty low system requirements, and open source.
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Including enterprise calls? Lots of companies use this for client calls etc....
Ya, I'm gonna have to see if we need to blacklist this for our org now. That's not gonna be popular.
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I use Jitsi professionally. Never had a problem. I send a link over and they hop on via the web interface and get it working quickly without prior knowledge of the platform. Oh ya, minor detail: it's FOSS.
Not sure if they have only just added a clarification, but it now says
Notwithstanding the above, Zoom will not use audio, video or chat Customer Content to train our artificial intelligence models without your consent.
Which seems to imply that by agreeing to their TOS, you are giving consent for them to use this.
THIS! When I read Zoom's response to the tweet that was the focus of this original post, my initial thought was "...but you are having them agree to terms without an opt-out"
Doesn't it also call out that any recordings are fair game
Zoom’s about to try and claim their click through EULA trumps client-attorney privilege. Let’s see how that goes for them.
As I understand it's extortionate consent though. Either you "consent" to your private data being used in this way, or you can't use Zoom.
Good thing there's self hosted and E2EE alternatives.
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Zoom got on the map because of covid and now that that's over and working from home isn't as popular as it was a couple years ago they need to figure out another way to make money, looks like they are selling customers data to do so.
Zoom isn't even allowing their employees to be remote anymore !
They got on the map because they were easier to use, which was a reputation earned by doing things like hijacking pre-install verification scripts to install it, running an always on and non-uninstallable server on your computer without you knowing, so it could access your webcam without needing to open the app, faking system prompts to get your root password...
Then there was lying about end to end encryption being enabled, and sending the unencrypted traffic to China for no discernable reason
Zoom is just a shitty company that has never been on the right side of user privacy. They'll do anything to make a buck.
RIP Zoom
On any non-open source or cloud based software, assume all opt out switches go to /dev/null
So, they're recording and stealing our corporate secrets, etc? That's going to go down well.
So, I suppose this means the end for Zoom use in business, no company is going to allow their intellectual property and secrets to be used by another company, especially what is essentially just their telephone call provider.
How zoom managed to become a thing, while alternatives already existed and were rather well known is beyond me.
What were the alternatives? One thing I can say about zoom is that it’s easy to use, barely ever has any issues and handles a huge number of participants without a sweat.
I recall having used MS Teams before. But it often wouldn’t work, had server issues and couldn’t handle large audiences well.
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They have just updated the ToS tho to now exclude using your data without permission for training AI. But Jitsi Meet is still a better option ;-)
“Hey, Joe, tell people we won’t use their data for AI without their permission!”
“But… they already gave permission by accepting the TOS, didn’t they?”
“Yeah, but they’re too stupid to realize that. So just keep repeating that we won’t use their data without their permission. That’ll get ‘em off our backs.”
Remember when everyone was buying zoom stocks?
That's not creepy/scary AF
Title probably needs to be reworded. Terms clearly mention they won't use it without user consent, not that they MUST use it. Doesn't mean it'll stay that way, but just don't consent for it when asked and you're probably okay (I'm mentioning this for those who have no choice but to use it, for things like work)
But if you don’t consent, do they still let you use their services? I’m going to bet that, at best, it’ll be designed to make users think they must consent to use the service.
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So don’t agree to the terms of service? This could count as consent.
What does consent consist of? Most other TOS state that using the product means you consent to whatever is included in the TOS.
Fuck my company. All the shitty companies cut IT workers and because of that they have to rely on microsoft and zoom.
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