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Comment by justinc8687 | Hacker News Reader

Given, that unlike many advertising supported services, you can pay Zoom and remove ads, I fail to see a problem with this.

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It’s the same as seeing ads on a chat platform. Why bother? There are plenty of alternatives with no ads. Developers won’t fall for this, but I guess your local church group won’t know any better.

Are there actually viable alternatives with similar quality and latency factors to Zoom?

Last I checked, the competitors, whether free or not, all had meaningful downsides (quality, latency, self-hosted, inextricably bundled to another system, etc) with the only upside being “it’s not Zoom.”

Honest question. I’m sure the land has changed a lot in the last 6-12 months.

I've had positive experiences with both Microsoft Teams (Skype) video and with Google Meet in the last 6 months. In terms of "stands alone easily," Google Meet has a pretty great experience for the casual user, although it does have some confusingly implemented UX (for screen-sharing, admitting-users, etc). The UX is easy for tech-oriented folks but your grandma might need some training.

The one I was kinda surprised wasn't any good, even for audio-only, was Discord. Not that it fits your criteria anyway.

n of 1 and all that, I don't have any supporting data.

I don't believe anyone is a casual user of video chat anymore. It's like calling someone a casual telephone user or a casual car user. It's fundamental to daily life.

I disagree, on video chat, telephone, AND car usage. Some folks (often (although certainly not always) older with a lower tolerance for UI changes) just don't use them very often.

My mother, for example, still prefers correspondence via snail mail. She has learned to tolerate FaceTime, but Zoom is always a bit of a hassle and requires a separate phone-call to her landline to help her walk through the steps to get connected. I don't think she's unusual. It's a big world, with lots of kinds of people in it.

"Infrequent" is not the same as "casual." If anything it's the reverse because you avoid using it unless it is literally a matter of life or death.

You are majorly in a tech (a.k.a HN) bubble if you think that. People whose jobs have been 100% in person the entire pandemic are not using video chat for work, so that leaves family and friends. Many people just talk on the phone or see people in person.

I'm in my 20s, work full time, and have attended fewer than a dozen zoom meetings ever, none of them for work.

I haven’t had too many issues with Google Meet, for example.

I'm a happy Discord user. I'm sure now someone will list all the downsides of Discord (proprietary, target demographic, etc) but I'm just answering the question as asked.

> Are there actually viable alternatives with similar quality and latency factors to Zoom?

Yes. Google Meet is just as easy to use, and Jitsi is even easier with zero signup required.

Does Google record video or audio or keep transcriptions or anything of what's said? I've always felt like a differentiating factor is privacy, not just comparing free / easy / quality etc.

> Given, that unlike many advertising supported services, you can pay Zoom and remove ads

If you are an enterprise, yes. For individual usage - like, for example, hosting a virtual beer night with friends - you have to go for a subscription that you have to take care to cancel afterwards.

It would be nice to have some laws around subscription services. Something along the lines of

1. Services have to inform the user (text, email...) every time they charge their card. Even better would be to inform 48 hours before, so users have a chance to cancel.

2. Any subscription service should provide the user to choose the duration, when they sign up. If I need LinkedIn subscription for 3 months, then I should be able to choose at the time of subscription, and it should be canceled automatically after three monthly payments.

And so on. These are all trivial to implement tech wise.

But hey, who am I kidding. These are never going to happen

That is the case in India enforced by RBI guidelines.

https://rbi.org.in//Scripts/NotificationUser.aspx?Id=11668

Watching this rule come into force has been weird and enlightening in many ways. For one, this rule caused a lot of friction as many banks and payment processing systems weren’t ready for it by the time it came into force. This despite it being announced over two years before it came into effect and a 6-month extension on the enforcement date! Also, while I personally like the new rules and support them wholeheartedly, there’s been significant opposition to them because they make it more onerous for businesses to set up subscriptions, an already rare and difficult business model in India. Personally, if your business mode counts on people so passively continuing to subscribe that they can’t re-authenticate every payment cycle (and that too only if it’s a significant amount per month!) I think you you should rethink what you do, but what do I know?

> For one, this rule caused a lot of friction as many banks and payment processing systems weren’t ready for it by the time it came into force. This despite it being announced over two years before it came into effect and a 6-month extension on the enforcement date!

Probably they hoped that the law got overturned by a change of government or because of lobbying/bribery... why invest in change when there's still a possibility of it being unneeded?

A change in Government isn't due for at least three more years - and even then, it's unlikely, as the ruling party hasn't really lost their popularity. I think you're right in that they were hoping for changes, but maybe through an internal process or something like that which didn't work out as expected.

And cancelling any such service should be required to be no more difficult than signing up for it was. For example, if you can sign up online with a simple form and a button click, you should be able to cancel online with a simple form and a button click.

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