But what this means is that someone from Chinese government gives a call to to MS or LinkedIn management and ask for these things, suggesting that any other option would result in less purchases of their office licenses and etc.

But, in a way, that&#x27;s not news. It&#x27;s not like anyone suspected MS of being trustworthy.

Not just Zoom; China has effective means to pressure.&gt; In 2019, LinkedIn blocked Zhou&#x27;s account from being visible in China, telling him in a message it was because of &quot;specific content on your profile.&quot; LinkedIn restored his account after media attention.

Furthermore, if they make an excuse after this story blows up, I think it&#x27;s reasonable to consider their justification &quot;retconned&quot; and not actually the real reason they closed the account (which can be reasonably inferred to be CCP-aligned censorship).

Maybe the journalist forgot to email them a meeting ID.

&gt; Zoom is forced to apologize by ChinaWhy would China want them to apologize? (Or there&#x27;s a typo?)Didn&#x27;t zoom do what C wanted already

A similar silence occurred when Marriott fired the guy over the tweet about Tibet. In fact, they were forced to apologize [0]. I kinda hope Zoom is forced to apologize by China as well to at least clarify the type of company they are.0 - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;MarriottBonvoy&#x2F;status&#x2F;951344031405084673" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;MarriottBonvoy&#x2F;status&#x2F;951344031405084673</a>

eh they probably just can&#x27;t be bothered. how many other accounts have they closed? what other normal company things is the company doing on a day to day basis, journalists can&#x27;t expect to circumvent the whole company calendar for something they latched on to as controversial.this is a misaligned expectation from the journalists and everyone swayed by what the media, and thats true without making any opinion on the particular issue at handyou have to assume this is going to harm the company for their lack of defensive response to mean anything. but maybe they are still converting customers into paying ones, maybe there is still enough liquidity for a secondary offering, maybe there are partnerships in the works that are more important and lucrative that don&#x27;t care about the media frenzy

Problems usually go away if you ignore them for long enough.

&gt; Zoom did not respond to a request for comment.When you can&#x27;t say anything that won&#x27;t get you into deeper trouble, say nothing at all.

&gt; it wouldn&#x27;t be very conducive to their government&#x27;s interests.It depends on your timeline. If you eliminate dissent you may be able to push through short-term aims or develop a facsimile of national unity, but you will naturally eliminate nuance from your geopolitics. Even one or two generations into this experiment, you can wind up with a leader who truly &quot;drinks the koolaid,&quot; who assumes the state propaganda to be reality. At that point, the regime is doomed.

Well, this presumes that it&#x27;s a government acting in good faith. Sure, something like the UK or a EU country should have dissent and criticism to keep democracy healthy. However, countries like China, Russia, and NK, have no interest in fostering a healthy dialogue and it wouldn&#x27;t be very conducive to their government&#x27;s interests.

This feels like the kind of thing that the CEO of Zoom should be asked about under oath by a congressional committee. It&#x27;s supposedly a US company so it would be interesting to see just what influence the Chinese government has over it and why.

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”-Martin Luther King Jr.This observation seems more immediate these days internationally than ever.

&gt; he dare not dismountSounds as if you think he wants to dismount

The problem for China is that Xi Jinping has essentially installed himself as dictator-for-life. He now rides to and fro on a tiger from which he dare not dismount.The CCP witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union and instead of opening up to a peaceful transition to democracy they chose to double down on top-down authoritarian policies. At the same time, they’ve sought to leverage markets for economic growth. The result is a conundrum: how to reconcile Marxist ideology with the prosperity of markets?This is where “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” comes in. This is an ideology of doublethink which can only be maintained through force. All of the censorship taking place, both inside and outside China, has the goal of ideological suppression for any speech the CPC deems a threat. And so here we are.

Why is this being downvoted?It’s a pretty accurate summary of Marxist beliefs.

Communists don&#x27;t think that political dialogue exists as a genuine process between rational actors. They think that people&#x27;s political beliefs are a product of their environment and class. This is why they don&#x27;t like free speech and don&#x27;t like debates. They think that schools are only capable of indoctrination. Therefore they seek to turn this indoctrination in favor of the workers rather than the bourgeoisie.Edit: if you disagree, please explain why. Marx believed that history moved according to dialectical materialism where almost all individuals are little more than atoms in a moving body.

This is why a successful democracy is one where only well educated and thoughtful people vote.  Making it easier and easier to vote is a losing formula.

There are advantages to the efficiency of authoritarian power, but how do they handle peaceful transition of power? How do they handle abuse?A lot of democratic stability comes from it being hard to change things quickly, separation of power, and the existence of a lot free speech so it&#x27;s hard to cover things up. Ultimately, with a dependence on the people.I could be persuaded that there are better ways to structure things within that, if a lot of thought was put into how to handle a tyrant&#x27;s rise and how to handle a transition of power. I probably could not be persuaded that limits on speech and government censorship are good long-term for the health of a society that I&#x27;d want to actually live in. I think it&#x27;s a good thing for governments to ultimately be accountable to their people.I generally agree with the sentiment that elected leaders fear getting voted out, while dictators fear getting dragged out. The ability to vote seems important for long term stability.In China&#x27;s case, it seems they&#x27;ve done away with terms entirely for Xi. Speech and dissent is tightly (and violently) controlled, and even when there&#x27;s just potential for future dissent, entire groups are put into camps to destroy their culture to supposedly reduce that risk.The west has problems too, but there&#x27;s a reason people emmigrate out to countries that are more free when they&#x27;re allowed to.Enormous economic growth and strategic planning have allowed their people to accept this abuse for now, though the party should be worried if that ever changes.

Even taking what you said at face value, what you&#x27;re describing is a strong body with no mind. If you could get a lifespan of a million years, but had to spend it in a coma, would you want to? If you could live a million years, but only as a passive passenger, while other people (or dice, why not) control your actions, would you want to?

You&#x27;re not considering the real and terrifying strengths that dictatorship has over democracy. In true democracies the politicians never undertake a plan that lasts longer than one election term because they have no incentive to do so. In China they feel free to undertake 20 year plans with large upfront investments because the party does not care about winning an election every 2-4 years.
Why do you automatically assume that elections provide a reality check? Would you say that the Democrats and Republicans in the USA are tightly coupled to reality given their frequent elections? On the contrary I believe that elections merely tie legislative actions towards what voters perceive as electable. It doesn&#x27;t matter what the PATRIOT act does as long as a political ad can sell the idea of &quot;safety&quot; to you. Politics in democracies have devolved to little more than entertainment.On the other hand, China has achieved something very close to a technocracy where rules are based on expert opinion. The economy is controlled by economists, health policy is controlled by epidemiologists, and media censorship is controlled by political and social scientists. You are more likely to advance based on competence in Chinese politics than you are in the USA, where elections are just a high school popularity contest. The Chinese government has plenty of terrifyingly competent bureaucrats.

Aiding in the Chinese media&#x27;s censorship is not good for China nor the world. When a government destroys the ability for it to be criticized it becomes untethered from consensus reality; megalomaniacs can take the reins and a kind of national hubris forms that can lead to devastating conflict and oppression.All governments need open dissent and criticism to keep from going down this path. Zoom should not be aiding and abetting the regime in this way.

The main reason I liked Zoom was because it was so easy to install. I&#x27;ve had zooms with non-technical people over 70, and not one of them needed help installing it.The same cannot be said of Google. Heck, as a technical person I have trouble getting Google Meet to work consistently. That was Zoom&#x27;s main advantage -- their ease of setup and use, and &quot;it just works&quot;. We now know that part of the reason that is the case is because they do some very unorthodox things that are security nightmares.Security and ease of use are always a tradeoff. Zoom has always been on the very far end towards ease of use and away from security.

No idea. We&#x27;re on Meet at my company, and I&#x27;m very happy with it. Works well in the browser, connects to Google calendar without any fuss, and I haven&#x27;t had any issues with dropped calls or low quality.

Much better video quality in Zoom than Google Meet from my experience with both products.

I haven&#x27;t personally used Google Meet, but part of what drew me to Zoom:- General preference for non-ad supported business model.- Google Meet wasn&#x27;t an option until very recently.- I really dislike hangouts and how it leaks chat all over Gmail (among other things), and this has biased me against their other products.- Similarly, I was a huge fan of Google Voice which was way ahead of its time and which they abandoned for years until many other multi-billion dollar companies rose up and took the space.- I&#x27;ve anecdotally heard Meet had worse video&#x2F;audio quality from friends.- I tend to try and avoid Google chat products since they&#x27;re usually a mess and often killed.Of all of these, the first and last are really the only valid reasons.Google Meet does have its own scummy practices though (adding itself to meetings without asking which confuses participants and is extremely annoying, Benedict Evans tweeted&#x2F;wrote about this).Maybe Jitsi works well enough to actually use? I already have a Matrix server, I could try getting friends to use that instead (realistically probably will be difficult).

My company tried to use Google Meet. With a group of around 16 people, Google Meet had all sorts of connection quality issues—people&#x27;s voices cut out while talking, sounded garbled, etc.A week later, we tried Zoom instead. We could hear everyone clearly. We&#x27;ve used Zoom ever since.I had some say in the decision to continue with Zoom, and I feel kind of bad about choosing it, but it&#x27;s hard to argue with the results. We had similar issues with Slack video calls (although we still use those for small groups—not my decision!), Microsoft Teams, and a product from LogMeIn called Join.Me. Unlike Zoom but like Google Meet, these products are all based on WebRTC, and I&#x27;m starting to conclude that WebRTC is just a crappy technology for large-group video calls.We admittedly haven&#x27;t tried Jitsi. Perhaps I&#x27;m part of the problem, but I don&#x27;t want to be the one to suggest a random product no one has heard of. Especially when that product is also based on WebRTC.

Doesn&#x27;t google meet only work in chrome?

Zoom is SO much more seamless than Meet. Its desktop clients exist, are usable, and don&#x27;t force you to keep trying Chrome whenever something breaks. (I swear Google never tests their prodcuts on FF&#x2F;Safari...)Meet also has a very fixed layout. Its mic control bar on the bottom cuts off the names on the bottom row of participants. The UI on &quot;waiting to connect&quot; page is hilarious; it has a line of vertical dots for changing settings, and a line of horizontal dots for monitoring audio. There&#x27;s a small concept in design called discoverability -- doesn&#x27;t exist for Google, lol.

Not being bound to the browser can be a huge advantage. I usually use at least two Zoom windows. One with a panel view of all meeting participants and a second with either a shared screen or the speaker view. In some cases I split the chat out as well. I find it super important to not only see what&#x27;s being shared, but also be able to watch people&#x27;s reactions.Zoom makes it also easy to see who has noise coming from their microphone, what audio and video up and down bandwidth is looking like. Lots of little things like this that matter if you spend most of your day in remote meetings.

Doesn’t Google censor it’s results in China?Google seems like at best lateral step regarding moral computing.

As much as I don&#x27;t like consolidation of tech, I&#x27;ve had really good experiences with Google Meet. No scummy practices like forcing users to pretend that the app installer doesn&#x27;t download just to connect from the browser either. What are Zoom&#x27;s advantages?

Can you elaborate on how keybase put you in that position?If by &#x27;recovering&#x27; you mean recover after a lost key, then I&#x27;d regard that as a feature not a bug!Am looking for a keybase alternative now.

You should be able to reset your account to negate all your keys and set things back up if you lost access to all previous devices.I ended up doing this anyway in the end, after deleting everything I could before I stopped using it.They do make you wait seven days before you can do it after you make the request.I still have the account because I don&#x27;t want to lose access to my username (didn&#x27;t delete it), but it&#x27;s otherwise empty and unused with fresh keys that have no history with anything.

Whoa. I didn&#x27;t know that. Even though my trust of Zoom isn&#x27;t completely eliminated (yet), that absolutely negates my reasons for using keybase.Granted, I haven&#x27;t used it in a while because they put me in a position where recovering my account is impossible.

And riiight when I create one lol -- argh, nothing in this world is good!

Thank you for the idea, just deleted my keybase.io account.

I’m not sure if Zoom has an app for Teams but on Slack we just start a call with `&#x2F;zoom`

Tesla canceled Zoom due to these privacy concerns expressed in this article. We use Microsoft Teams now and it&#x27;s much better. Everyone already used it as an instant messenger before this and since it&#x27;s part of the Outlook ecosystem i&#x27;ve found that it&#x27;s much better. It&#x27;s also saved a ton of useless meetings that run really long because i can just call someone straight through Teams instead of setting a meeting.

Yep - this is why I was so disappointed: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23105031" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23105031</a>

Wow, looks like I have been living under the rock for a little bit. The monetization strategy was not clear to me, but I though that eventually having premium accounts would make sense. The launch of Stellar was a little confusing.

This kind of thing is the exact reason why I was disturbed by the Keybase.io sale to Zoom and abandoned my account. (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23105253" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23105253</a>)I&#x27;ve been currently using Zoom during the pandemic because as a product it&#x27;s still the best (and I signed up for a discounted year of pro), but I won&#x27;t give them any money again.

&gt; find another solutionHave you tried Jitsi?

&gt; Zoom is a company I have loved so farDo you love the company, its leadership, its product, or its pricing?

I&#x27;ve tried Google Meet, Jitsi, and some other things, but Zoom is the only service that my 6+ year old laptop can handle for more than 5 min without nosediving into 100% CPU usage and freezing up.Does anyone have other suggestions? Either for other services or for troubleshooting Jitsi?

I will say Google Meet has gotten much better since the pandemic started, e.g. support for many more participants in its grid view.

After evaluating a number of solutions, we chose uberconference (no relation to uber). I really like it, especially that the conference is just a phone number.

Zoom is a company I have loved so far, but a lot of this is starting to really rub me the wrong way and I really don&#x27;t want to have to go find another solution.However, without some sort of reversal, this is enough for me to deal with the mess of doing that.

Is that a joke? We know nothing about what data they collect for what purposes. Just that they do.

Doesn&#x27;t the Chinese government have transparency in their surveillance?

Either it is E2E encrypted, or it is unencrypted on zoom servers and the only claim that they can reasonably make is that they haven&#x27;t provided their employees with the tools to observe a call invisibly.

So that statement is correct, you just confirmed it yourself.

Encrypted = private to most people. There’s no reason to muddy the waters with the fact that Zoom encrypts some data temporarily at some time with keys that they control, because that isn’t what anyone cares about.

&gt; This is incorrect. They don&#x27;t offer end-to-end encryptionIt&#x27;s all about end-to-end encryption, so it&#x27;s correct. If they decrypt it anywhere on the way then three letter agencies can always listen to what you say with a proper letter.&gt; and they have promisedAre you serious?

A promise is a promise. The &quot;no way to spy&quot; is likely just compliance. A lot of companies have compliance guarantees in place, like SOC2, which is about processes and documentation&#x2F;audit trail. So the thing blocking you from reading customer data is another person in the organization having to confirm it&#x27;s a legitimate action.Government level surveillance is not the same as an employee listening in on a whim. It&#x27;s an organized endeavor, which comes with a process, so it may as well be ok from compliance point of view.

&gt; They don&#x27;t offer end-to-end encryption, but it is encrypted between each client and the Zoom servers,I think it&#x27;s absurd that when talking about private messages the bar for privacy would be so low as to say that client-server encryption would be a &quot;feature&quot;-&gt; they have promised there&#x27;s no way for a Zoom employee to spy on a conversation without visibly joining the meetingThat&#x27;s false unless no one at zoom has logins to any of the servers that route the calls or deploy code to them. Let&#x27;s be clear and specific about the terms. &quot;no way for&quot; and &quot;not allowed under guidelines&quot; have very different technical meanings.

IMO that&#x27;s not &quot;incorrect&quot; so much as it is &quot;ambiguous about the type of encryption being referred to. Even the most spy-happy, malicious service could offer HTTPS encryption, so hearing &quot;they do encrypt some stuff&quot; doesn&#x27;t address concerns about Zoom willfully monitoring customersNeither does the second part about promising not to spy on a conversation; surrendering conversation metadata would be almost as bad from a privacy perspective.

&gt; Zoom CEO Eric Yuan said in early June that the company has chosen not to encrypt free calls in order to cooperate with law enforcement.This is incorrect. They don&#x27;t offer end-to-end encryption, but it is encrypted between each client and the Zoom servers, and they have promised there&#x27;s no way for a Zoom employee to spy on a conversation without visibly joining the meeting. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;alexstamos&#x2F;status&#x2F;1268061790954385408" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;alexstamos&#x2F;status&#x2F;1268061790954385408</a>

Some comms you want to monitor, some you want to disrupt... And Chinese authorities like big gestures, sending messages, &quot;we know who you are and what you do, we can get you anytime, you are not safe anywhere&quot;.

Why would I necessarily assume my end-to-end encrypted calls with a trusted party are being surveilled?

&gt; Is there any reason not to assume that the Chinese government is surveilling Zoom calls en masse?Always assume your calls on the public internet are being surveilled by all parties, no matter which service you&#x27;re using.But beside that... if they were surveilling them... why would they close them? Why would you shut down your intelligence source?

That&#x27;s right, let&#x27;s boycott Zoom!

Iirc google also banned the installation of the zoom client on work devices.

&gt;&gt;[...] as have New York State schoolsThe NYC Department of Education (DOE), one of the largest in the nation, banned Zoom in April but &quot;following several weeks of collaboration with the company, [NYC DOE is] now able to offer Zoom as a safe, secure platform for use across the DOE&quot; as per a letter Chancellor Carranza wrote on May 6th, 2020.[1]Public school teachers tried other video conferencing solutions but, for better or for worse, Zoom&#x27;s UX was always easier to use or less janky than other paid or opensource offerings at scale -- and that&#x27;s saying something because Zoom&#x27;s UX isn&#x27;t what any of us might call super smooth.[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;connectdocs.blackboard.com&#x2F;xythoswfs&#x2F;webui&#x2F;_xy-1309165_1-t_47Sm5UKr" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;connectdocs.blackboard.com&#x2F;xythoswfs&#x2F;webui&#x2F;_xy-13091...</a>

Is there a non-Zoom client that can connect to Zoom meetings? My company implemented RingCentral about a year ago, which appears to just use a rebranded Zoom architecture for the online meeting component. They&#x27;re not going to get rid of it anytime soon.

&gt;The government of Taiwan banned official use of Zoom due to security concerns, as have New York State schools, the U.S. Senate, and the German ministry of foreign affairs.This is good enough reason to not use it.Also I stopped using zoom and trying to avoiding it as much as possible after the very first vulnerability scandal[0] came about[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;bugbountywriteup&#x2F;zoom-zero-day-4-million-webcams-maybe-an-rce-just-get-them-to-visit-your-website-ac75c83f4ef5" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;bugbountywriteup&#x2F;zoom-zero-day-4-million-...</a>

That&#x27;s weird use of the term &quot;soft power&quot;.

&gt; Is there any reason not to assume that the Chinese government is surveilling Zoom calls en masse?Why does this event move the needle one way or another? The group had a paid account so Zoom knows who they are, and this was a publicized event. All the Chinese government needed to know was an event they don&#x27;t like was happening, with the services of a company they can exercise soft power over.

Aw man, I didn’t know those iPads were a Zoom product. For some stupid reason I was under the illusion that my company made a home-grown Zoom meeting room solution.

To be fair, Zoom is the best video conference software I&#x27;ve ever used. It&#x27;s so much better than Skype or anything created by Google, Facebook, etc. When I first started using it at work 5 years ago, I was blown away at how stable it was, and how many people could connect at the same time. It just worked.

it’s trusted because it actually works vs terrible solutions like Microsoft Skype, Webex, etc.

In my workplace and from my perspective, I don&#x27;t know how Zoom became trustworthy in the first place except through growth hacking and selling iPads with their software on it under the &#x27;Zoom Rooms&#x27; name.Besides that, why defend a company or a corporation in the first place? It&#x27;s a damn shame that people are more enervated by corporate strife than by the suffering of our fellow beings.

If they have a workforce in China, there are 100% spies working there. Putting it another way, China would be foolish not to have spies working at Zoom, just like it would be foolish to not have spies working at Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, etc. You should assume all of those companies have been infiltrated by the major countries of the world, or they are working with them. To believe otherwise would be extremely naive.

does the presumption of innocence mean nothing anymoreIn a court of law, yes. In the court of public opinion, it has never been that way.I don&#x27;t blame people for being suspicious of Zoom. Why wait until the harm has already been done to move to something else?Zoom knows it has a credibility problem. If Zoom really cared, it would do something to distance itself from China and the Chinese government. But it doesn&#x27;t.

Is it often that China unblocks a communication platform without them fully complying with the CCP’s desire to monitor and censor everything?I can’t think of any major platforms that got banned and reinstated with zero changes. I’m treating that as evidence that they are colluding.

I might be wrong here, since I only have this from hearsay, and I certainly won&#x27;t touch Zoom. But, wasn&#x27;t the &quot;end-to-end encryption&quot; a term they used in a blatantly deceptive way? The two ends not being the two users, but the user A and zoom servers, and zoom servers and user B? Please do correct me if I&#x27;m misinformed.Edit: I checked. They&#x27;ve got you fooled.

Don&#x27;t want to sound I&#x27;m defending Zoom or CCP, but how does en masse surveillance work technically in this case? How practical it is to go over all the voice data (not manually I presume)? Text based mining and censoring is possible but there still is a huge gap and language expertise isn&#x27;t cheap. I might be missing a few references but it&#x27;ll be great if someone could point me to these links.

&gt; Is there any reason not to assume that the Chinese government is surveilling Zoom calls en masse?It makes perfect sense to boycott Zoom based on their security issues, but does the presumption of innocence mean nothing anymore? It shouldn&#x27;t be difficult to prove that Zoom is actively trying to block Chinese activists.China banned Zoom during the trade war. Are you going to treat that as evidence that Zoom isn&#x27;t colluding with the CCP? Why is Zoom not embracing end-to-end encryption to free users evidence that they are beholden to China, but Zoom committing to end-to-end encryption for paid users not evidence of the contrary? This type of circumstantial cherry picking is how conspiracy theories sprout.

How on earth could a user &quot;prove&quot; this? Mention some secret on a call and then watch for the Chinese government to act on that secret? Give us a break. It&#x27;s much safer to assume surveillance and protect oneself accordingly.

&gt; Is there any reason not to assume that the Chinese government is surveilling Zoom calls en masse?The burden of proof lies on you to prove they are.

&quot;That China has everyone&#x27;s face 3D scanned by now (multiple photos from multiple angles), everyone&#x27;s voiceprint, everyone&#x27;s IP, transcripts of what was said and by who&quot; 
As a native Chinese, I haven&#x27;t been scanned by 3D scanner. How do you get this conclusion?

&gt; surveilling Zoom calls en masse? Documenting participants (face, voice, language, location, etc.),The first time I read that Zoom is the shell (in the USA) while the majority of work is being done in China, I thought the exact same thing. That China has everyone&#x27;s face 3D scanned by now (multiple photos from multiple angles), everyone&#x27;s voiceprint, everyone&#x27;s IP, transcripts of what was said and by who...Now they are trying to rebuild their shattered rep, while still handing anything and everything to their patrons.

There’s a big difference between routing an encrypted packet through China and decrypting that packet on a server located in China.Likewise, there’s a big difference between employing a Chinese national in the US and having a large part of you engineering organization operate from within China.

&gt; Curious, did you background check every employee&#x2F;contractor to make sure they are Chinese race free?That&#x27;s immoral, illegal, and silly; effectively nobody is doing this, and if most people found out about that, they would try to put a stop to it. The PRC is a state, that state does not have a monopoly on representing any race.This is not a Chinese people problem, it&#x27;s a CCP problem. Chinese people in the ROC don&#x27;t do this sort of thing.
這不是華人的問題，這是中共的問題啊。中華民國的華人不這樣做。&gt; Do you audit every every byte of your network traffic to make sure it is not Chinese IP routable? How often do you update your firewall rules?Yes, I operate servers and routers that simply do not route to or from PRC IP blocks. It&#x27;s often the right thing to do, given that “reputable” server operators like Baidu seem to be the source of a huge proportion of the impersonation and spam, and often zero legitimate connections. When I get DMARC reports, more than half of the reports are PRC IPs impersonating my mail host, hopefully for reflection rather than full-on impersonation.

&gt; I see people on HN defending Zoom all the time.&gt; its product development has been based in China, and that some Zoom calls were accidentally routed through Chinese servers.Curious, did you background check every employee&#x2F;contractor to make sure they are Chinese race free?Did you do every byte of your network traffic audit to make sure they are not Chinese IP routable? How often do you update your firewall rules?Because if you don&#x27;t do either of these, if you run a successful company, someone will write an article to complain you have employed a Chinese developer and routed traffic to China.

&gt; I feel like the good faith presumption for this companyWhen you place faith in a dictator, like the CCP, this is always the result:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Useful_idiot" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Useful_idiot</a>

I think Zoom is probably best used for hangouts-on-air type things, where you are literally publishing the contents of the call to the world in realtime anyway; for anything else it&#x27;s off my list.

“I see people on HN defending Zoom all the time.”I get the vibe with anything China related. Like it takes an over abundance of facts not to be attacked. Zoom fiasco is interesting though. I don’t do anything I don’t mind be monitored on there so sort of careless for now

You are oversimplifying the issue, in my opinion. Zoom has R&amp;D office in China. If Chinese authorities come to Zoom with a violation of local law, Zoom has two options. First ignore the request and this means that the company is likely to be banned in China or comply with the request and get blowback in US. This issue is not unique to Zoom and each company makes its own decision. For instance, Google and Facebook fail to comply and are banned in China. But Apple does comply with Chinese laws and there are number of apps that are simply not available in China but are available in US. However, I wouldn&#x27;t make a judgement that Google is good, but Apple is bad. Nor is this issue limited in China. Same thing applies to EU. EU has passed GDPR laws that all US companies have to comply with if they want to do business in EU. Again, some decided to comply with GDPR, others exited the market. Even in US this issue exists. When the government tells Google that they can&#x27;t offer their services to Iran or sell to Huawei. Google chose to apply. You can try to make an argument that complying with US government orders is good, but complying with other government orders (EU, China, Brazil) is bad. This may work for you if you are an American, but the rest of the world knows about the Patriot Act, Edward Snowden and NSA. You could also make an argument that complying with any government is bad and the way PRISM is enabled by US tech is terrible. But if US companies start ignoring US laws, no matter how terrible they are, the only right thing to do is to shut the company down. It&#x27;s called a rule of law. I am writing this not to say that Zoom is good or bad, but to prevent oversimplifying the issue or vilifying specific companies, countries or governments.

There is really no excuse for &quot;accidentally&quot; routing through Chinese servers for a service. To me the reasons are as shallow as Google&#x27;s &quot;error in algorithm&quot;.Just recently YouTube &quot;accidentally&quot; deleted the account of a pro-democracy channel in Hong Kong with more than 600k subscribers [1]. Incidentally, this has never happened to pro-Chinese channels.[1] (only sources in Chinese are available) - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;inews.hket.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;2664703&#x2F;%E3%80%90YouTube%E5%B0%81%E6%AE%BA%EF%BC%9F%E3%80%91%E8%95%AD%E8%8B%A5%E5%85%83%E5%8F%8A%E5%A4%9A%E5%80%8B%E9%A0%BB%E9%81%93%E5%BD%B1%E7%89%87%E6%B6%88%E5%A4%B1%E3%80%80%E7%B6%B2%E6%B0%91%EF%BC%9A%E8%95%AD%E8%8B%A5%E5%85%83%E5%87%BA%E4%BA%8B%EF%BC%9F%C2%A0" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;inews.hket.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;2664703&#x2F;%E3%80%90YouTube%E5%B...</a>

Our organisation has just reversed course on zoom and it is no longer our go to video conferencing tool.

I am more worried about dictatorships recording everything than other regimes. Does not excuse recording at all, just an appreciation of the level of risk.

I totally agree with you, there&#x27;s a very high probability that the Chinese gov is recording everything.But is that any better than being 100 % sure that the US gov is doing it?I mean, what is the point of &quot;the Chinese may be listening this is horrible!&quot; when we know for a fact that the US are listening and most probably multiple european countries.Nowadays, you must assume that whatever you do online is recorded by multiple states and may be used against you one day.

&gt; recording content, etc.Would it be technically feasible to record everything?

I feel like the good faith presumption for this company has to have shifted by now. Is there any reason not to assume that the Chinese government is surveilling Zoom calls en masse? Documenting participants (face, voice, language, location, etc.), recording content, etc. We&#x27;re talking about the data of 200M+ users.I see people on HN defending Zoom all the time.&gt;The company has acknowledged that much of its product development has been based in China, and that some Zoom calls were accidentally routed through Chinese servers.&gt;The University of Toronto&#x27;s Citizen Lab said it found serious concerns over Zoom&#x27;s security protocols, and said the company&#x27;s large workforce in China left it &quot;responsive to pressure from Chinese authorities.&quot;&gt;The government of Taiwan banned official use of Zoom due to security concerns, as have New York State schools, the U.S. Senate, and the German ministry of foreign affairs.&gt;Zoom CEO Eric Yuan said in early June that the company has chosen not to encrypt free calls in order to cooperate with law enforcement.

Lol, no; it is exactly the same thing.Anyhow, this is about a private company suppressing speech, so I guess you are OK with that?

I would agree if there were multiple competing private companies with comparable market shares, representing the opinions of different social groups. This way, if certain companies started applying censorship that wouldn&#x27;t reflect the interests of the users, they would lose the market share and would have to listen more to what people want.Instead, we have an effective monopoly on online search, monopoly on content monetization and a monopoly on social media. These monopolies are sustained through network effects and lack the feedback loop.Edit: I would even say, they have a wrong type of feedback loop, since they are directly incentivized to censor the opinions that go against the vocal social groups, since that could result in decreasing profits.China could technically spin off their censorship functions to a privately owned company that would wholly depend on the state-issued license to operate and would keep doing exactly the same thing. Would it make them more democratic or change anything for the end users?I think, the distinction between private and government is a technicality. What is more important, is how many independent parties are making the censorship decisions, and whether they report to a single vs. distributed source of power. From that angle, the government-dominated Chinese web is very similar to Silicon Valley-dominated western web.

Perhaps the greatest difference is that the US government and large corporations don&#x27;t even need to employ a lot of violent repression to get the media to jump through hoops and do parlor tricks; their ideological control is deeper and more effective than that of the Chinese state.

This article&#x27;s about Zoom. Which, ironically, has a lot better case for &quot;hold your video call elsewhere&quot; than Twitter does for &quot;engage with the American political class elsewhere&quot;.The sad fact is, nobody&#x27;s principled and everybody&#x27;s just reaching for arguments based on which &quot;side&quot; is being gored.

Remember when the American government got all the payment processors to blockade WikiLeaks because of political speech? Don&#x27;t pretend that the American government doesn&#x27;t suppress speech.

&gt; and letting private companies suppress speech, which is what happens in America.Considering that private companies are now becoming more powerful than many governments&#x2F;countries, maybe this is something we should take another look at.&gt; When the government does it, you can&#x27;t express that idea anywhere.Can&#x27;t you argue that you can always move to another country, just like you can use another company?&gt; When private companies do it, you can still express those ideas somewhere else.Depends on the private company and its scale&#x2F;monopolistic position.

It&#x27;s a theoretical distinction much more than a practical one.So there is a difference, but I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s &#x27;vast&#x27;.

There is a vast difference between letting the government suppress speech, which is what China does, and letting private companies suppress speech, which is what happens in America.When the government does it, you can&#x27;t express that idea anywhere. When private companies do it, you can still express those ideas somewhere else.

&gt; the same behavior for &quot;sensitive topics&quot; back homeI&#x27;m not aware of any government action regarding speech and sensitive topics like we see in China, or other dramatically less free countries.

&gt;It is ironic how the western publicOnly part of the US public, to be fair.That said, the US public does certainly seem to be mostly apathetic about the giant US government surveillance system, even though that system, if the right sort of political will appeared, could be rapidly turned into a system of social control rivaling what China has.

It isn&#x27;t, because you are wrong. Do not compare (I assume) the warnings around Trump&#x27;s lies to be comparable to blocking human rights activists from a platform outright.

I don&#x27;t know if &quot;ironic&quot; is quite the right word there; I&#x27;d go with &quot;hypocritical&quot; or &quot;completely expected&quot;.

People&#x27;s primal need to &#x27;kill the bad thing&#x27; is completely dysfunctional in our modern world, and on the Internet, hopelessly unrealistic. (There&#x27;s always Tor. You can&#x27;t completely get rid of something...not if it has enough interest.)I even feel bad for the platforms due to this push and pull, with them always in the middle. Always being pressured one way or another: &#x27;Allow this content, you&#x27;re censoring us!&#x27; or &#x27;Take down this content, it&#x27;s abhorrent!&#x27;Since the companies are the organisational equivalent of sociopaths anyway, surely they can make the hard decisions. Why not just have filters? If users don&#x27;t want racist, terrible content, then just tick a box in their settings that will tune their personal algorithm to not show it! Then it&#x27;s their fault they&#x27;re only siloing themselves further into their own echo chamber - not the platforms&#x27;.

&gt; NYT reporters forced the opinion editor to resign for allowing a Republican senator to publish an op-ed.That is quite a naive interpretation. It&#x27;s not like the Times Opinion pages have never seen a Republican op-ed. The issue is that the op-ed in question advocated for violence against American citizens based on factual errors and flimsy premises.

Seriously. Just a week ago, Facebook employees went on strike because FB refused to censor Trump’s messaging. NYT reporters forced the opinion editor to resign for allowing a Republican senator to publish an op-ed. Meanwhile, I’ll bet many of those same people consider censorship of Tiananmen Square to be wrong.Apparently, there is good censorship, and bad censorship. What’s frustrating is that the proponents of “good censorship” do not even realize this irony, or at least they 
call it a false equivalence when you point it out to them.To address that “false equivalence” criticism, I would be curious to hear from someone who thinks Facebook or Twitter should annotate Trump’s posts. Do you also think that they should annotate posts about Tiananmen square to include links to the Chinese government’s narrative that actually, there was no massacre and it was a CIA-instigated riot?Who decides which posts to annotate and what to annotate them with? It’s not just the CCP who believes the Tiananmen square massacre didn’t happen; there are millions of Chinese citizens who agree with them, just like there are millions of Americans who disagree with Trump. So is there a difference between a mob of Americans asking to annotate a Trump post about a BLM protest with a CNN article, and a mob of Chinese people asking to annotate an Ai Weiwei post about 
Tiananmen Square with a People’s Daily article?

It is ironic how the western public generally frowns upon the silencing of dissident throught in China, and at the same time welcomes precisely the same behavior for &quot;sensitive topics&quot; back home.

We have seen high profile cases with gamers and athletes being influenced to limit what they say about China. This case seems to be with a much less notable person, but I wonder how often this happens and is never seen. Many tech companies publish metadata about requests they receive from governments (such as DMCA, search warrants, etc.) It would be nice to see some transparency on requests to censor.

Here&#x27;s a secure open-source Zoom alternative:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;meet.jit.si&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;meet.jit.si&#x2F;</a>

How can anything good come from a move like this?  I do my best to avoid Zoom anyway.

Zoom seems to be botching this unique opportunity that the pandemic has presented to them. They are getting dragged way too deep into a geopolitical crisis. I know several companies in N. America that are already transitioning from them. That&#x27;s all what their competitors wanted to see.

I&#x27;ll pry and see what I can get. If it&#x27;s true, I imagine it will be out shortly.

I feel I should be careful believing this until I see a source reference of some kind.

In response to this specific event, or as a general bonus? I would love to hear any more details you can share.

how many US employees? any way of knowing?

Might want to put the edit at the top of your message for people skimming through...

I really don&#x27;t understand this. I am not American so may have a different perspective, but if by being private, you are ok with censoring, then you are ok with anyone banning blacks from their businesses, or not hiring gays, or only allowing women to go up the corporate ladder if they sleep around. After all, it is their private company, so why should I care about sexual harassment, blocking people, etc as long I am not the target? Heck, lets have white-men only private schools again, let&#x27;s leave those blacks&#x2F;gypsies&#x2F;whatever out, after all, it is a private school so it should be able to discriminate against anyone.

A counter argument to this would be to acknowledge that in actuality a free market is regulated. It has to be regulated in order to be free. That&#x27;s because there are bad-actors who lie, manipulate the market, deceit the public, with no discrepancy and with complete impunity.

This is the recipe used by some agencies to avoid scrutiny: have private companies do the job for them.Your argument’s end point looks like your freedom to only use video conferencing tools that respect your ideals. Would I do that, I’d have to leave my job and stop talking to pretty much anyone.

They can do whatever they want as a private company.  I can do whatever I want as well. Including leaving zoom. They should have the right to enforce whatever standards they want, and we have the right to disagree and leave.

I have stopped regarding it as a fallacy.  It seems to be something of a predictive measure at this point.

The slippery slope is a logical fallacy.  But people aren&#x27;t logical entities for the most part, and the real world doesn&#x27;t even vaguely resemble a philosophy classroom.

At least you recognize your slippery slope fallacy when you make it!

&gt; I wonder if we&#x27;ll hear the &quot;they&#x27;re a private company, they can do what they want, it is only censorship if the government does it&quot; routine.Perhaps that applies, perhaps it doesn&#x27;t. Did they remove the account due to pressure from the CCP?

One man&#x27;s activist is another man&#x27;s bigot.

Is there an objective way of distinguishing between an activist and a bigot? The CCP can just say that they consider this activist to be a bigot.Internet platforms should never have been in the business of censorship. Unfortunately, liberals encouraged them to censor their political opponents for short term gain. The result is sad but predictable. Any speech that offends someone powerful is now subject to possible censorship.

Going after bigots on your platform does not equal going after activists. Please do not intentionally confuse the two.

They want to dump on platforms for taking action against hate speech and instigating violence because &quot;someone else censored political activism&quot;. It&#x27;s a disgusting point of view.

i notice you say “certain kinds of speech” instead of speech promoting violence and racism.im not aware of twitter et al banning any reasonable political activism.

I have to be internally consistent and agree that it&#x27;s at Zoom&#x27;s discretion as a private-sector company whether to host specific content or provide services to specific people and viewpoints, just as it is for Facebook&#x2F;Twitter etc.Two things are additional considerations that may change how this sort of action ends up for Zoom:1. Zoom will be judged in the court of public opinion for their decision to align their moderation of access to their service with the CCP. This is likely a different degree of backlash than you&#x27;d see with, say, shutting down the accounts of US-based hate groups.2. Zoom may come under scrutiny—without concrete evidence—for introspecting the content of communications through its platform that would otherwise be presumed to be private. This is different from Facebook&#x2F;Twitter etc., for which much of the content that drives moderation decisions is public.Zoom is not abridging anyone&#x27;s constitutional right to free speech, nor would they be able to. How they are judged for their specific actions, though, is entirely at the discretion of their user base and public opinion.

&gt;I wonder if we&#x27;ll hear the &quot;they&#x27;re a private company, they can do what they want, it is only censorship if the government does it&quot; routine.The implication here is that they did it under pressure from the CCP, presumably because most (all?) of their programmers are from China. Blizzard got raked over the coals as well over a similar incident (search &quot;blizzard blitzchung&quot;).

There’s a difference between a private company doing that on their own accord, and bowing to the CCP.

Nope, it&#x27;s still a great illustrative comic. The people that disagree with the censorship are the ones showing Zoom the door. It&#x27;s all individual choice, from Zoom and from those who agree &#x2F; disagree.I don&#x27;t agree with Zoom&#x27;s censorship because I don&#x27;t agree with China&#x27;s laws. But I&#x27;m not in China, so I have the luxury of expressing my opinion about pretty much anything. Zoom, having operations in China, chose their path. Fine with me, it just means Zoom are lower down my list. That&#x27;s precisely the scenario depicted in the comic.

This has always been a really stupid comic. I like most of Randal Munroe&#x27;s work, but this one has always rubbed me the wrong way.But then again, Americans are always conflating the principe of free speech with your first amendment.Exluding private companies from free speech discussions has no real use when they have monopolies or oligopolies, and your websites keep getting shit down because people are complaining to your ISP about content, or when payment services such as Visa and Mastercard refuse to do business with you.

This xkcd comic didn&#x27;t age well: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;xkcd.com&#x2F;1357&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;xkcd.com&#x2F;1357&#x2F;</a>. Liberals used to cheerfully link to this whenever a conservative was deplatformed. I don&#x27;t think they&#x27;ll trot out this xkcd anymore when their favored people are being censored.

It&#x27;s not a violation of the free speech guarantees of the constitution, which is what people are usually discussing when that line comes out. I don&#x27;t think what Zoom did should be illegal. That said...There have recently been a whole lot of apologists saying &quot;yes their founder is from China and their developers are in China but that doesn&#x27;t make them a Chinese company&quot;. Fair enough, but when that company further starts intentionally enforcing Chinese law on US customers, I have no problem calling it a Chinese company. And I will not use a Chinese company&#x27;s communication product unless forced to.

&gt; The same people are now cheering when Facebook, Twitter, and the like shut down certain kinds of speechHow do you know they are the same people?

Is censoring hate speach really the same as censoring discussion of genocides? Really?

&gt; it is only censorship if the government does itOr if a government forces a private company to do it.

Are Zoom events like the one in the article public, such that any person who logs into Zoom can access as part of their interface, with out looking for it, the event in question?Does the content of the event persist in a way that makes it easily sharable, with comments?If the answer to both of these is “no,” I contend that the communications on these platforms is “private” and should be regulated by the US Government against censorship (though I have no hope that it will be). My reasoning is this:(1) Zoom has no expectation that private communications will harm their business. In the same way Ma Bell never took responsibility for the zillions or drug deals and kidnappings that got coordinated over their system.(2) Lack of viral potential means the possibility of inciting violence, cyber bullying, and other negative consequences of mass internet communication is diminished.Both of these points have a correlating contention about censorship on Twitter, Facebook, etc: they (not the government) ought to censor content that has the potential for negative outcomes like those I mentioned. Is it difficult? Absolutely. Will there be disagreements? For sure. But, they can afford to figure it out, and our society can’t afford for them to not to.NB: We need nuance and reasoning here. Falling back on first principles and calling it a day is not enough; those principles were articulated at a time where speech replication depended on industrial machines and were limited by how fast a pony could run. We’re talking the ability to beam information practically into every child’s brain 24&#x2F;7 anywhere on the planet using psychological tricks to engage them.

Isn&#x27;t the base argument is tolerance&#x2F;inclusivity good, intolerance bad. (Intolerance like inciting violence, suppressing criticism, homophobia, xenophobia, bigotry, the usual.) And simply taking steps that make make the world better according to this base argument is also good?This of course can become slippery and slope-y eventually, if a propaganda machine takes over as the tolerance authority, but I don&#x27;t think that&#x27;s a real problem compared to what the other problems the argument is trying to address.

I wonder if we&#x27;ll hear the &quot;they&#x27;re a private company, they can do what they want, it is only censorship if the government does it&quot; routine.I remember about a decade ago when certain parties were so concerned with voices being silenced and &quot;erasure.&quot; The same people are now cheering when Facebook, Twitter, and the like shut down certain kinds of speech, with great discretion as to how the &quot;rules&quot; are implemented. These parties have been quiet, so much so, over China.Down we slide along the slippery slope!

Plenty of companies elsewhere seem perfectly happy to do likewise.  Offered as neither a defense of Zoom nor the CCP, but as calling out a tired strawman argument.

This is what everyone was afraid of with zoom. That like many other companies out of communist countries they aren&#x27;t independent and will actively subvert democracy.

This is a bit of a rabbit hole but my misunderstanding in the early days of the internet was HOW people might choose to relate to one another via the internet, and I dramatically underestimated the amount of negative interactions there would be...Tech itself was always a yin and yang to me.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cdn-images-1.medium.com&#x2F;max&#x2F;1000&#x2F;1*crxdmz7o9297jz0L1RkbAw.png" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cdn-images-1.medium.com&#x2F;max&#x2F;1000&#x2F;1*crxdmz7o9297jz0L1...</a>

Well, authoritarian regimes wouldn&#x27;t be first to shut this down. Western corporations will, because of illegal content sharing, no enforceable DMCA, and all this

That&#x27;s why I keep calling for a NEW Internet to be created based on HORNET technology. HORNET is basically the same as the Tor network, but with speeds similar to the current internet.Sites can&#x27;t be traced or blocked and neither can its users. There will be free speech, along with all its excesses (terrorism, child porn, illegal content sharing etc.).If everyone migrates towards the HORNET internet authoritarian regimes will either have the choice to block the entire internet (causing massive economic damage) or allowing free speech.

I remember the good old days when we all thought that tech would help export democracy and free speech...

What sponsorship has to do with any of this ? Do you know who&#x27;s sponsoring this specific Chinese activist ? Any other banned channels and persons ?

If it happened to be the case that the ROC was sponsoring this activist, that would not change how I feel about it.

Don&#x27;t you see the difference between state-sponsored outlets like RT and the individual activists Zoom banned?

Yea. &quot;Youtube is a son of a b, but he&#x27;s our son of a b&quot;

The thing is, it&#x27;s much simpler for you and the person your talking to to switch from Zoom to SomeOtherApp. But with Youtube - you can take your own videos off of it, but you can&#x27;t take the ones you want to watch off.

Ultimately it boils down to a value judgment.RT and Sputnik spread misinformation and have coordinated efforts to influence another country&#x27;s elections.The activist in question was providing a forum for people affected by the Tiananmen massacre to memorialize their loved ones and ensure people remember what happened.I&#x27;m fine with the first ban, but not the second, and I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s at all weird or hypocritical to hold that position. &quot;Spreading lies with the goal of sowing geopolitical discord&quot; is not the same as &quot;memorializing a historical event that China would rather sweep under the rug&quot;.(And before you say &quot;but the US influences elections all the time&quot;, yes, I agree that the US does do that, and I wish it wouldn&#x27;t, but that&#x27;s not material to this particular discussion.)

So everybody is cool with youtube removing videos and banning channels of RT, Sputnik and pro-Russia accounts; but Zoom doing just the same for the very same reason somehow makes everyone feel bad for Zoom .

China stealing IP was a concerning issue in the past 2 decades and it&#x27;s still an ongoing issue. Yet now we have companies willingly handing over data to a CCP-controlled entity. I&#x27;m not sure whether to cry or to laugh.

This matters to me and might be enough to get me to switch away (as a former zoom defender). On the other hand, for the average person using Zoom for video calling their families, or for companies forced into WFH that finally set up a Zoom subscription and would have to go through self-imposed bureaucratic hell to swap platforms? I think the usability of the platform and simple convenience far outweighs any desire to switch right now. I wonder how sticky their consumer base actually is.

Exactly, it&#x27;s more like a default choice than a &quot;really good one&quot;.

The UX is actually not that good. The layout is bad, features are hidden all over the place. It’s not logical or intuitive. 
It does have a lot of features though, I think that is what people like.

After seeing plenty of discussions on HN where people expressed how they&#x27;d rather keep using Zoom despite 1) clear security issues and 2) the development teams living in China, I didn&#x27;t feel there was any other way to express the issue (and the discrepancy in values). There seems to be a blindness to geopolitical realities in the tech world, and this occurrence is the perfect example.

It is a hard rule! <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;newsguidelines.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;newsguidelines.html</a>

I mostly agree with what you are trying to say, but being snarky is against the hn guidelines. Edit: “against” is too strong a word - it isn’t a hard rule but I often see the hn community react negatively to sarcasm and snarkiness even though the content may be worthwhile.

No. Zoom should be banned and its CEO ousted.The company should be purged from all Chinese influences.

If the alternatives were that better why will a chinese activist not use them?Zoom is simply easy to use. I have tried all... Use Teams and SFB at work

Guys, guys, it&#x27;s fine. According to everybody on HN who&#x27;s so eagerly embraced Zoom and continued to use it even after the security issues, the only thing that matters is that Zoom is the best UX experience for video conferencing. Forget about the human rights, suppression of free speech or the fact that the company is wholly subservient to the CCP (not like anybody could&#x27;ve ever foreseen anything like this ever happening). Just focus on what&#x27;s important: Zoom is a great product, far better than all the US NSA-ridden ones. So everybody should keep using it, no matter what Zoom or the CCP does.

&gt; those platforms that endorses pure freedom of speech and ends up being labeled by society as a haven of crime and extremismOh, You mean like physical conversations between people?&gt; Might be required for enforcement against illegal activity&quot;required&quot;? You mean, it would _help_ governments enforce laws. If enforcing the law is a supreme consideration, then it&#x27;s required. For me - it is not.

Might be required for enforcement against illegal activity, either by law or by desire to avoid ending up as one of those platforms that endorses pure freedom of speech and ends up being labeled by society as a haven of crime and extremism. Would be hard to keep control of that without centralized control.

It is enough for the title to say just: &quot;Zoom closes account&quot;.That is already a horrendous misfeature of a communications application. It should not have a central authority which controls accounts (or even knows about all valid accounts).

S&#x2F;he is not saying all governments are equal in all respects. As far as we know only the Chinese, Russians and the 5-Eyes have the technical capacity to monitor us all and have been caught out doing it.So yes, you are correct: not all governments are equal, but the US and Chinese are similar in their practical totalitarian capacities.

Whataboutism is usually done to defend something by making it look better in comparison but what the OP was arguing is that we should be pursuing end to end encrypted solutions exclusively because it’s not just the Chinese government who are doing the snooping. ie he’s not defending Zoom nor the Chinese government but suggesting the complaint against Zoom&#x2F;China doesn’t go far enough

Please don&#x27;t post this sort of unsubstantive and generic comment. It makes discussion more predictable and much less interesting.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hn.algolia.com&#x2F;?dateRange=all&amp;page=0&amp;prefix=true&amp;query=by%3Adang%20generic%20discussion&amp;sort=byDate&amp;type=comment" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hn.algolia.com&#x2F;?dateRange=all&amp;page=0&amp;prefix=true&amp;que...</a>Also, the whataboutism trope is an example of canned arguments that don&#x27;t belong in HN threads. One should respond either to the specifics of an argument, or downvote&#x2F;flag a comment as appropriate, or just not respond. I wrote more on this elsewhere in the thread: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23481335" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23481335</a>.

Not all governments are equal. Cut out this whaddaboutism.Edit: When I replied, OP was simply “governments monitor all major companies... including the US government”

We detached this subthread from <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23481161" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23481161</a>.

governments monitor all major companies... including the US government (PRISM is pretty old now, so we can assume that they monitor others by now: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;PRISM_(surveillance_program)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;PRISM_(surveillance_program)</a> ). So if the traffic is not end-to-end encrypted, assume that they can view your traffic. Sometime they play on words and say that end-to-end means from customer to cloud... but the cloud should not have the key.

The above China concern is legit but a lot of the issues in the above links have been fixed in the updates ~2 months back.

I relied on Mozilla&#x27;s guide and they seem to be perfectly OK with recommending Zoom as a video conferencing app<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;foundation.mozilla.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;privacynotincluded&#x2F;categories&#x2F;video-call-apps&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;foundation.mozilla.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;privacynotincluded&#x2F;categor...</a>

I generally share a smattering of links like these:Zoom banned from New York City schools due to privacy and security flaws <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fastcompany.com&#x2F;90486586&#x2F;zoom-banned-from-new-york-city-schools-due-to-privacy-and-security-flaws" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fastcompany.com&#x2F;90486586&#x2F;zoom-banned-from-new-yo...</a>Google Told Its Workers That They Can’t Use Zoom On Their Laptops Anymore <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.buzzfeednews.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;pranavdixit&#x2F;google-bans-zoom" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.buzzfeednews.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;pranavdixit&#x2F;google-bans...</a>Elon Musk&#x27;s SpaceX bans Zoom over privacy concerns <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reuters.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;us-spacex-zoom-video-commn&#x2F;elon-musks-spacex-bans-zoom-over-privacy-concerns-memo-idUSKBN21J71H" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reuters.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;us-spacex-zoom-video-commn&#x2F;e...</a>Beware of ‘ZoomBombing:’ screensharing filth to video calls <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;03&#x2F;17&#x2F;zoombombing&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;03&#x2F;17&#x2F;zoombombing&#x2F;</a>Zoom needs to clean up its privacy act <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blogs.harvard.edu&#x2F;doc&#x2F;2020&#x2F;03&#x2F;27&#x2F;zoom&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blogs.harvard.edu&#x2F;doc&#x2F;2020&#x2F;03&#x2F;27&#x2F;zoom&#x2F;</a>Zoom security issues: Here&#x27;s everything that&#x27;s gone wrong (so far <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.tomsguide.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;zoom-security-privacy-woes" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.tomsguide.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;zoom-security-privacy-woes</a>Mass move to work from home in coronavirus crisis creates opening for hackers: cyber experts <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reuters.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;us-health-coronavirus-cyber&#x2F;mass-move-to-work-from-home-in-coronavirus-crisis-creates-opening-for-hackers-cyber-experts-idUSKBN2153YC" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reuters.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;us-health-coronavirus-cyber&#x2F;...</a>Security and Privacy Implications of Zoom <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.schneier.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;archives&#x2F;2020&#x2F;04&#x2F;security_and_pr_1.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.schneier.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;archives&#x2F;2020&#x2F;04&#x2F;security_and_...</a>‘Zoom is malware’: why experts worry about the video conferencing platform <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;technology&#x2F;2020&#x2F;apr&#x2F;02&#x2F;zoom-technology-security-coronavirus-video-conferencing" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;technology&#x2F;2020&#x2F;apr&#x2F;02&#x2F;zoom-tech...</a>Ex-NSA hacker drops new zero-day doom for Zoom <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;finance.yahoo.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;ex-nsa-hacker-drops-zero-140020837.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;finance.yahoo.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;ex-nsa-hacker-drops-zero-1400...</a>Maybe we shouldn’t use Zoom after all <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;03&#x2F;31&#x2F;zoom-at-your-own-risk&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;03&#x2F;31&#x2F;zoom-at-your-own-risk&#x2F;</a>Attackers can use Zoom to steal users’ Windows credentials with no warning <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arstechnica.com&#x2F;information-technology&#x2F;2020&#x2F;04&#x2F;unpatched-zoom-bug-lets-attackers-steal-windows-credentials-with-no-warning&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arstechnica.com&#x2F;information-technology&#x2F;2020&#x2F;04&#x2F;unpat...</a>The Zoom Privacy Backlash Is Only Getting Started <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wired.com&#x2F;story&#x2F;zoom-backlash-zero-days&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wired.com&#x2F;story&#x2F;zoom-backlash-zero-days&#x2F;</a>Hackers Are Selling a Critical Zoom Zero-Day Exploit for $500,000 <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.vice.com&#x2F;en_us&#x2F;article&#x2F;qjdqgv&#x2F;hackers-selling-critical-zoom-zero-day-exploit-for-500000" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.vice.com&#x2F;en_us&#x2F;article&#x2F;qjdqgv&#x2F;hackers-selling-cr...</a>Researchers found and bought more than 500,000 Zoom passwords on the dark web for less than a cent each <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;500000-zoom-accounts-sale-dark-web-2020-4" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;500000-zoom-accounts-sale-da...</a>

I refuse to use Zoom at all.If it&#x27;s a client I have a comfortable relationship with, I&#x27;ll tell them honestly why I won&#x27;t use it.If not, I tell them &quot;I can never get Zoom to work on my computer&quot; or something similar, and provide an alternative.

I will not use it. Have used it once with some friends when it seemed churlish not to, but have refused to and suggested using Jitsi Meet since then with others including at work.Work insists on Microsoft Teams now. Oh well. At least I am only probably being spied on by the &quot;good guys&quot; now, right?

I don&#x27;t use it because development team is based in China.

Nor Jitsi, whether you self-host (which you can do) or use the first or a third party site.

You don’t need to install it to join a zoom meeting, that’s one of the reasons it’s so popular.

Just say &quot;our company policy does not allow using Zoom due to security concerns&quot;, then suggest an alternative that you prefer.

Is anyone here boycotting use of Zoom? I have a few clients that ask me to use it and I&#x27;m trying to think up a good response as to why I don&#x27;t have it installed. For those of you that have rejected it on principle, what are you all saying?

Let’s see where “but it’s a private company and they have the right to ban any user the want”, “it’s not censorship if it’s not the government doing it”Well I hope this illustrates why that argument isn’t a good argument to make.

Let&#x27;s face it: if they have assets in China and are a Chinese company, assume the worst. They almost certainly don&#x27;t have a choice(And no there is no moral equivalence with Twitter or FB removing an, say, Al Qaeda account.)

I don&#x27;t think this compares directly to the now-commonplace kowtowing that you are referring to. That would be more akin to Zoom, for example, retracting and apologizing for some public statement that it made in recognition of the Tiananmen Square protests.Instead, this is a US-based communications platform, barring its US-based users from discussing something that is offensive to a foreign regime, and doing so outside of any official rules that they have made public.Now, of course, you are correct, this has nothing to do with any kind of deeply held values. It is merely about money. I don&#x27;t think that makes it better.

But that&#x27;s why we constantly have to remind these companies that such sycophancy will cost them dearly in the world&#x27;s largest market.

How is that outrageous? US companies cow tow to CCP all the time, e.g. the NBA. If you&#x27;re trying not to get blacklisted by the world&#x27;s second largest market then it makes plenty of sense.

That link (the one in your other comment works) doesn&#x27;t really say anything the article doesn&#x27;t already.All it says is that the account was shut down a week after the event, and that &quot;it seems possible ZOOM acted on pressure from the CCP to shut down our account&quot;.That appears to be pure conjecture however, which is why I want to hear Zoom&#x27;s side. Nobody&#x27;s disputing the account was blocked, but there&#x27;s zero information on why.

Here are more details shared by Humanitarian China with links to the video recordings and the photos of Zoom blockage.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.google.com&#x2F;document&#x2F;d&#x2F;12DM3ccTe70yzqCDPu9uXlCD7.." rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.google.com&#x2F;document&#x2F;d&#x2F;12DM3ccTe70yzqCDPu9uXlCD7...</a>.

And arguably as a society standing up for democracy and free speech should begin to not use any such platforms who sandbox to support these bad actor governments.

It looks like the account was reinstated: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;ZhouFengSuo&#x2F;status&#x2F;1270828746589769732?s=20" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;ZhouFengSuo&#x2F;status&#x2F;1270828746589769732?s...</a>My guess is that they were under pressure to close all the accounts in the meeting, backpedaled after the article, and reenabled the non-Chinese ones. Honestly, if they just did this to begin with, it&#x27;d be understandable? They just fucked up and blocked the non-China accounts too, triggering the China Watchers of which this reporter is a prime member of.I ultimately see companies adopting the TikTok model, where Chinese users basically get their own sandboxed app and company structure subject to Chinese law that nobody else can communicate with.

&gt;If Zoom, an American company, really did intentionally close the account of someone living in the US, because the Chinese government asked them to for political reasons, that does sound outrageous.Most of their devs are from china.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnbc.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;03&#x2F;26&#x2F;zoom-key-profit-driver-ahead-of-ipo-engineers-in-china.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnbc.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;03&#x2F;26&#x2F;zoom-key-profit-driver-ahead...</a>&gt;Zoom disclosed in its IPO prospectus last week that most of its product development personnel are based in ChinaPresumably they don&#x27;t want to lose their pool of cheap programmers.

Zoom may operate in multiple countries. But they are physically and legally headquartered in the United States.

I&#x27;d just like to see more evidence and information before making judgment here.There&#x27;s no response from Zoom whatsoever, which is odd. Could this have been other users maliciously reporting the account as abuse, and it was closed automatically? Or something else similar?Or if China is putting pressure on Zoom, then how exactly?If Zoom, an American company, really did intentionally close the account of someone living in the US, because the Chinese government asked them to for political reasons, that does sound outrageous.But it&#x27;s so outrageous that I actually have a hard time believing it&#x27;s true. It feels like business suicide. I want to hear Zoom&#x27;s side here first -- which I expect we will soon, since this story broke only 2 hours ago.

Zoom closes account of U.S.-based Chinese activist after Tiananmen event