[complex1314]

Maybe they tried Skype first, which works horrible (tried twice, never managed connect all the participants at the same time), and finally relief over something that actually works. I have used Zoom successfully with 70 participants, and then breakout groups. The only alternative I can see that recently came to my attention is Jitsi Meet (https://jitsi.org/), which I will try next time I have the opportunity. But seems like it has at least one of the same weaknesses as zoom, with no end to end encryption (https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/7syt0s/jitsi_meet_...)

[folmar]

You can also try BigBlueButton (https://bigbluebutton.org). Open source, and a lot of nice things done better than the usual online meeting standards (e.g. included whiteboard and slides are real slides and watchers have a lot of flexibility in watching them).

[1over137]

But Jitsi is open source and you can self-host it. Then there's no third party in a hostile country controlling anything.

[_-___________-_]

As far as I can find out, FaceTime is currently the only solution for "just works" (in the sense that your grandma could use it) videoconferencing that is e2e encrypted.

[notechback]

But it only works if everyone has Apple devices, so it absolutely does not "just work" if even one family member doesn't have it.

Most video chat apps are straightforward once set up on the phone.

[_-___________-_]

Are you aware of other video chat apps that support e2e-encrypted multi-party videoconference?

[zeveb]

If there are no cross-platform apps which support e2e-encrypted multi-party videoconferences, then there simply is currently no solution at all for 'just works' secure videoconferencing, because part of just working is not requiring users to switch to a platform they otherwise would not.