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Comment by dcow | Hacker News Reader

Honest question, why does Zoom’s security reputation matter more than Keybase’s? There’s so much pessimism in here but I really don't get it. I disliked zoom long before any of the security issues because frankly it’s rough, unpolished, software that’s never really worked well for me. I, for one, would be excited to get a functional Zoom with better security integrated into Keybase as an option for UI so that you have a serious “productivity” app. Why does the fact that zoom needs help in the security department automatically spell the end of times?

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Just out of curiosity, what was it about Zoom that never worked well for you? I work with oodles of academics, and that was the singular reason they flocked to Zoom - out of box ease of setup / ease of use that trumped WebEx and GoTo Meeting.

Privacy considerations were secondary and only came to light (from their perspective) during the increased scrutiny brought during COVID-19.

Their client software locks up my machine every other day. You can’t screen share on wayland. My coworker can’t run a build while on a zoom call or his machine just dies. The UI has never scaled properly on my displays. The zoom icon is distorted in my task switcher. You can’t use zoom in the browser. It’s a lot of little things that add up. I’ll admit I’ve never used zoom on Windows. Perhaps they've invested most of their effort on that platform. And credit where it’s due, when the video calls work, they work as well as any.

Zoom running on Plasma in X has worked fine for me for years. I would suggest that the problem (like so many others) is a Wayland ecosystem maturity thing, not a zoom thing.

It is kind of surreal for me, that you complain that Zoom does not on Wayland. Even though i use Linux myself.

The missing piece here isn’t a factor driven by technical logic, but a factor by human logic.

It was “cool” to use Slack until it became widely used, and then it was “cool” to use Keybase instead. Zoom is currently seen as “uncool” (E2EE screwup + widely used), so when they purchase “cool” Keybase, now Keybase automatically becomes “uncool” as well and people will look for something “cool” to migrate to next.

This isn’t a complete explanation of all possible reasons, but it’s absolutely a contributing factor.

EDIT: I predict Riot/Matrix will be the replacement “cool” for Keybase.

Keybase was useless for the most part anyway. It became a vehicle to airdrop and shill shitcoins. Anyone saying it was some kind of bastion of user privacy is being overly nostalgic.

Rough and unpolished, perhaps... but zoom is super popular because it's dead simple and gets the job done, and all the big players could learn a lot from them about putting end users first and not trying to leverage them just to push other products. To me the only question is whether Zoom will screw it up by emulating the mistakes that the big players have made.

Yes to all this.

I've been juggling a lot of meetings between Zoom and my kid's school on different platforms, and the difference between Zoom and Google Meet is night and day. Schools are mostly switching to the latter because of the security concerns, but damn is it terrible. It's like Skype from 15 years ago.

What I want is PKI that works for real people. Keybase was trying to be that, and I was really excited about it. But, that's not what Zoom is selling. So Keybase being acquired by Zoom means what I wanted is dead.

Thats fair. And it‘s a much more interesting discussion IMO. Why is Keybase only really used for chat? I mean you can `keybase pull` all your friends’ pgp keys into your local keyring. It’s way way better than reading off fingerprints at a key-signing party. And yet that still didn't lower the barrier enough for people to actually use crypto for shit. Maybe the key is email. Maybe Keybase missed an opportunity to bring email into the equation so everybody could do “web stuff” backed by social pgp without a second thought.

Keybase is sitting on a potential vidconf goldmine heading to our brave newcov world. Keybase was sitting on top of a VC flush trapdoor opening to the abyss.

Tech doesn't matter nearly so much as market. Marrying better tech chops to better market potential is a rather better investor storytime.

(Doesn't mean it'll work, doesn't mean Keybase tech will, or won't, survive. But the plave to be is Zoom's niche with Keybase's clue.)

> Honest question, why does Zoom’s security reputation matter more than Keybase’s?

Because Zoom is the buyer and they have the power. Sellers can make whatever promises they like (see: Whatsapp, Instagram) and it is reasonable to assume the buyer will have their way in the end.

Zoom will certainly use Keybase to improve their security overall. However, the rather obvious lack of commitment to existing users means there likely won't be any longterm.

My prediction: Zoom integrates well with keybase, there's a blog post that keybase is shutting down external services in a few months, the keybase founders leave and 1-2 years later, we hear of a new company they've founded.

One scenario in which Zoom's rep matter more, to me, is that they keep keybase alive, but now Zoom's slop infiltrates keybase.

In one way, good job Zoom for looking into security. In another way, I'm still looking at this awful UX that's buggy as hell and thinking it's gonna be a real slog for the keybase team to overcome that momentum.

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