Is Zoom-dissing just in fashion these days? In the last few days I've seen these on HN:
- Having the Facebook SDK installed in their iOS app, which sends user data to Facebook even if the user has no Facebook account
- Having a setting, that's off by default, that lets other callers see whether you have the Zoom app in focus
- Having a general "accessibility over security" engineering attitude, which led them to eg shipping their desktop apps with a builtin HTTP server (and with it a much bigger security surface area), just to skip one extra step in the join-meeting-via-a-zoom-link-flow. They removed it after a backlash, but the engineering attitude probably didn't change.
Now, I agree that all of these are bad. It's OK for outrage to happen over these things, every single one of them are shit and major companies like Zoom need to get their act together.
But I also think that many apps out there do stuff like this. The majority of popular apps, I'd wager. Why is Zoom being singled out? First Vice, now a Harvard blog, a bunch of unsubstantiated tweet storms.. Is it just, en vogue to diss Zoom somehow?
You are right that many pieces of software infringe on privacy. However, Zoom only recently has become one of the most widespread of these and because of that has only recently begun to affect a significant portion of the population, hence why it is newsworthy.
I think this also has to do with the fact that Zoom is being used for work and school and therefore people have less choice over their use of it. It's not a social network that many people have chosen to start using, it's a piece of software that millions of students and other people are being required to use without consideration of privacy.
- Having the Facebook SDK installed in their iOS app, which sends user data to Facebook even if the user has no Facebook account
- Having a setting, that's off by default, that lets other callers see whether you have the Zoom app in focus
- Having a general "accessibility over security" engineering attitude, which led them to eg shipping their desktop apps with a builtin HTTP server (and with it a much bigger security surface area), just to skip one extra step in the join-meeting-via-a-zoom-link-flow. They removed it after a backlash, but the engineering attitude probably didn't change.
Now, I agree that all of these are bad. It's OK for outrage to happen over these things, every single one of them are shit and major companies like Zoom need to get their act together.
But I also think that many apps out there do stuff like this. The majority of popular apps, I'd wager. Why is Zoom being singled out? First Vice, now a Harvard blog, a bunch of unsubstantiated tweet storms.. Is it just, en vogue to diss Zoom somehow?