Best videoconference platform
Here’s our favorite videoconference platform:
Why: Jitsi Meet offers free, open-source, end-to-end video conferencing. (The Jitsi platform also serves as the basis for other services, like Swiss-based kMeet.)
Other options
- Whereby: based in Norway rather than Silicon Valley, it’s less prone to the security and surveillance problems that plague Zoom.
- Meet.coop, "open source meeting and conferencing tools, running on cooperatively owned infrastructure," powered by BigBlueButton. See also this review in Co-op News (Apr 28, 2021).
- Jami, free software for videoconferencing and messaging. Peer-to-peer, not centralized, and end-to-end encrypted.
More resources
- Jitsi Meet vs. Whereby: a good comparison of features between Jitsi, Whereby, and Zoom (Rolf Mistelbacher, April 14, 2020)
- From Ars Technica (Aug 2, 2021): “Zoom has agreed to pay $85 million to settle claims that it lied about offering end-to-end encryption and gave user data to Facebook and Google without the consent of users.” There’s no evidence that Zoom leadership has become trustworthy since then.
- How to use the Zoom malware safely on Linux if you absolutely have to (Aral Balkan from Better, June 25, 2020)
- Zoom Deleter, an open source tool by Sam Lavigne, "continually checks for the presence of Zoom on your computer, and if found, immediately removes it." (Levigne also made Zoom Escaper.)
