Best videoconference platform
Last updated: September 15, 2021
Here's our favorite videoconference platform: Jitsi.
Why: Jitsi offers free, open-source video conferencing and can serve 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.)
Best-of
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