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Comment by ljm | Hacker News Reader

In my workplace and from my perspective, I don't know how Zoom became trustworthy in the first place except through growth hacking and selling iPads with their software on it under the 'Zoom Rooms' name.

Besides that, why defend a company or a corporation in the first place? It's a damn shame that people are more enervated by corporate strife than by the suffering of our fellow beings.

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To be fair, Zoom is the best video conference software I've ever used. It'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.

You're getting downvoted, but they really do have a solid product. A lot of their growth does come from their aggressive sales and marketing, but their video conferencing solution is by far the best I have used—it Just Works™ in a way that none of their competition seem to be able to match. (And I've used most of their competitors.)

Which is a shame given issues like the OP and all of the security/privacy problems they have had recently.

Then again talking about videoconferencing solutions and immediately comparing to Google or Facebook, and not mentioning something like Cisco Webex is like talking about mail and immediately comparing to Yahoo.

And before you say "but Zoom is free", obviously it's not. From the carefully orchestrated lie about "end to end encryption", to the routing of calls through China, and to the topic of this article. At every step they catered to companies more willing to look just at the price and never ask a single question.

Yahoo Mail is one of the best web email clients today. Any gmail user that I've talked to who has tried Yahoo Mail prefers the Yahoo UI overall.

Having said that, the US government installed a linux kernel module (approved by Marissa Mayer) that sniffs traffic on Yahoo Mail servers, so don't send anything you don't want recorded.

Totally agreed. The thing I think contributes most to this impression is how local voice is recorded at all times on the client, and then replayed at a higher speed to the other participants if the connection drops briefly. This enables others to hear what was said, without having to listen to the speech at the original pace, which would result in a delay. Genuis!

This has been standard practice with video calling products for many years. I know at least FaceTime and Duo do it. It might even be built into WebRTC?

MS Skype for Business and Teams also do this, just to give two more examples that I’m aware of.

Teams is better

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

At least Skype and Webex don't accidentally route your calls through China. I don't really like Skype but Webex shines compared to either Zoom or Skype. And I'm talking meetings with triple digit attendance, meetings with dozens of simultaneous breakout sessions and screen sharing, etc. By far a better experience than Zoom.

The thing that Zoom really has going for it is that it's free and heavily marketed. This made it popular with a lot of people. But it's exactly the people who are least prepared to make an informed decision (and yes, I count a lot on "company men" here). The reasons are sprinkled all over every Zoom article.

Except that Skype non-accidentally routes your calls through Microsoft's servers, and it was originally a P2P application. End-to-end encryption too started being "complicated", "unfeasible" and "unnecessary" after they acquired the company. Thanks, but no thanks.

But that's exactly the point, others do things more transparently and if you don't like them you're at least in a better position to make an informed decision. Plus there's a major difference between Microsoft and China. Take the current article for example.

You're willing to hand-waive all of the many, many proven, and intentionally hidden major issues with Zoom but you suddenly become worried that Skype works as advertised, poorly as that may be? Would you apply the same principle to your food and taking the one that lies on the label about dangerous ingredients? Or do principles change with accounts?

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.

It never really worked properly for us, but what worked a little too perfectly was the camera control.

I had so much fun pointing the camera towards the open door and zooming in so far that we could all lip-read a conversation happening across the office. Or, due to a lack of forethought, creating the official CrotchCam(tm) by letting the camera auto-focus and then zooming in to the unfortunate victim's midriff.

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