It's frustrating because the App absolutely doesn't need it. I use the native .app, but I've never run their installer. Instead you can just unpack it using command line tools (I even wrote a script to do this [1]) and… it runs just fine! No privileges, no special installation. As best I can tell, the installer is there to install a bunch of ancillary nonsense.
I did one other thing when I discovered their app auto installing a launchd auto-update service:
rm -rf ~/.zoomus
sudo touch ~/.zoomus
This makes a file with root permissions where they hide their auto-update script directory. This causes their code to (silently) err out and viola, no more launchd junk.
A lot of software has moved from using dmgs to mpkgs, and apart from some terribly written apps that need some hackery in PostInstall scripts, most of them don’t really care about it.
The UX for packages also sucks. With DMGs you just mount and then drag to the Applications folder… even the most basic macOS users have done this.
It still has way, way more privileges than a webapp. And arguably, if you have all your valuable information in a single user account, it has the crown jewels already, no admin needed.
I did one other thing when I discovered their app auto installing a launchd auto-update service:
This makes a file with root permissions where they hide their auto-update script directory. This causes their code to (silently) err out and viola, no more launchd junk.[1]: https://gist.github.com/caldwell/c212119fffd92a1d706c0a9b00f...