[slovenlyrobot]

Entirely shoot from the hip comment, but at this point I feel it's warranted..

What is with all the Zoom hate? The company have been around for a decade, enjoyed relatively mediocre success until the outbreak of Covid, and suddenly apparently since they're experiencing huge demand and press coverage, every man and his dog is finding reasons to write a blog post complaining about them.

I've read some article splitting hairs over the nuances of "end to end encryption" and how Zoom is so horrible, evil and wrong because they, like almost every telecommunication provider under the sun, can intercept your calls. What makes Zoom so special?

What's driving all this hate? Because it's a far more interesting question than what technical flaws Zoom, or any other product in this category, almost certainly suffer from.

Has someone done any security analysis of Houseparty? It's experienced surge growth in the same period. But in the time I've seen maybe 20 Zoom-hate articles on HN I haven't seen a single mention of Houseparty. What about Google Hangouts: is it "end"-to-"end" "encrypted"? What about its recording feature? Where are the articles? Where is all the hate?

Why?

[sneak]

It’s quite simple: Zoom are lying. They’ve doubled down on their lies.

End to end encryption means something. Zoom isn’t that. Zoom is claiming to be that.

There’s not much to it.

They set the stage for it previously, too: they’ve done all sorts of shady things with computers onto which their client is installed. Zoom singled themselves out of the pack by being some of the only name-and-address provided software to use these techniques; everything else that does so is criminal malware.

Apple even pushed an OS malware detection update to remove Zoom’s backdoor.

They stand alone because of their own choices.

[detaro]

a) not all criticism is "hate"

b) Zoom is a major phenomenon right now, massive user boost, at first positive articles all over the media about how everyone is now using it for all kinds of things etc. That means people are paying attention to it, and if they find something (and apparently there was a bunch of things to find) the same media is going to pick it up, because it's already talked about everywhere, boosting what normally would be a blogpost somewhere only few read, or a private bug report, to something hitting mainstream channels. Which means more people have opinions about it, which means more space to argue about if those opinions are justified or not, ... (Whereas I haven't heard of whatever "Houseparty" is, neither in positive nor in negative)

c) There's no discussion of Google Hangouts being end-to-end encrypted because Google doesn't claim it is, doesn't claim their servers don't decrypt it, ...

d) If someone finds security issues in hangouts, I'd hope they report it, but given the above it likely wouldn't be as widely reflected in the media. If they'd gotten all the positive attention, more people would be digging there now/rolling out the usual anti-Google talking points/...

[m463]

I believe this is a social phenomenon.

It's like a friend invited you to a party at Zoom's house, and you go because of your friend. And then you invite a friend to the next party, and your kids are having parties there.

Until you find out that Zoom's been taking advantage of you and all your friends. And Zoom has been going through your coat in the coat closet, and unlocking your car with your car keys.

You started because of your friend, but now you feel used.

[KZeillmann]

It's probably because HN is a particularly privacy-focused community and Zoom's privacy policy is a bit more questionable than other companies

[slovenlyrobot]

This could have been true except probably half of HN have an Android phone in their pocket. So this, like with Android and Google Play Services, is a case study in perception management. Suddenly the perception of Zoom seems to be forced in a particular direction.

My paranoid 4 glasses of wine self can believe nothing other than money being involved.

[GauntletWizard]

Houseparty isn't end-to-end encrypted, and never claims to be. That's why we (I'm one of the SREs on it) don't get taken to task for it.

Nonetheless, we got hit with weird privacy claims; See Monday's firestorm of "Houseparty hacked my {bank|email|spotify}!"

[justapassenger]

It’s very simple: with great power comes great responsibility.

Zoom is having explosive growth, and they very much deserve scrutiny, as half of the world is installing their app, and it’s powering now communication from random birthdays, schools to medical support.

[Waterluvian]

The real question is why doesn't everyone go after other companies with this much rigor too?

[scoot_718]

Because nobody is using Houseparty, also you've obviously not used google.

[meritt]

Zoom should have just called it 'Autopilot' instead of end-to-end and HN would have defended it to the death, despite that not actually being what was offered.

[detaro]

Weird example, given there's massive arguments about the Autopilot label every time it comes up.