
Zoom corrects usage numbers: says it has 300M daily meeting participants - ciccionamente
https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/30/21242421/zoom-300-million-users-incorrect-meeting-participants-statement
======
Legogris
I don't want to imply too much here, but I'm surprised by all the people here
saying Zoom "just works" whenever Zoom is mentioned. It's a recurring mantra.

I've had various really annoying issues (completely blank settings windows,
sound devices not getting recognized or used properly, crashes). All of these
I've experienced both historically and during the past month. Neither Ubuntu,
Arch or NixOS, all on three different laptop models, have been free of show-
stopping issues.

When a customer wants to use Zoom for a call, it's been about 50/50 that we
can do the call without issues.

I just find it suspicious that all the top comments are "it just works" when
my experience has been the complete opposite, in various environments.

So far Google Meet and Whereby (formerly Appear.in) have been the least
hassle-free in my experience (probably due to being web-based). Looking
forward to trying Jitsi when I have the time and inclination, it looks really
promising.

~~~
chintan
Zoom for Ubuntu client works perfectly fine. Been using for past 4 months on
Ubuntu 18.04

Yesterday our team gave a shot to Google Meet but it does not allow screen
sharing on Firefox (seems IE6 errr Chrome only feature)

~~~
Wowfunhappy
Huh, I'm able to screen share via Google Meet on Firefox! Running OS X 10.9.

------
hombre_fatal
I've listened to multiple major podcasts lately that suspiciously mention Zoom
during the show in obvious "organic" ads.

Most recently was Conan O'Brien's "Connan Makes a Friend" podcast where they
have what are obvious potted mentions of Zoom on the show.

In one instance, Conan pretends that he accidentally minimized the video
conference app they're using. And finally his co-host is like "just click the
Zoom icon to bring it back!" Like, that would obviously be cut if it was real.

In another instance, Conan says he's really bad with tech but has been getting
better now that he has to figure out his laptop without employees around to
help him. And then he adds that once the quarantine is over, he'll probably
forget everything... except how to use Zoom, of course.

Just thought it was somewhat relevant here since it seems Zoom is doing some
massive marketing campaigns. Not to mention how it seems in ubiquitous use and
everyone online is constantly mentioning it. Pretty damn impressive.

~~~
lathiat
Aren't the FCC in the US pretty strict about requiring you to specifically tag
paid material?

This could just as easily be paid advertising as a joke (zoom is getting most
of the news cycle for 'meetings' atm, so it's the topical product to joke on).
And in some countries I'd more easily believe it's paid but I see a lot of
work even creators/youtubers have to go into to explicitly declare
sponsorship's I'd just be surprised.

If that's not the case please let me know!

~~~
jasongill
No, the FCC is not at all strict about having to tag paid material. You may
mean the FTC, but as far as I know there is nothing that says that TV shows
have to disclose any sponsored segments

~~~
jszymborski
Don't know about TV, but if this is a v/podcast, then you need to disclose

[https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-
center/guidance/ftc...](https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-
center/guidance/ftcs-endorsement-guides-what-people-are-asking)

------
Jonnax
Honestly Zoom just works how you expect it to.

Other applications do exist and they're bad from a usability perspective.

Google hangouts maxes out my CPU. Teams is a horrible electron app which I'm
loathe to use.

So the negatives are that it's unencrypted, traffic might be routed through
China sometimes and unknown participants can join if they have the meeting
link with password.

For the majority of people they're not too bothered.

I'd argue that security is about having an understanding of the risk and
mitigating it accordingly. And for a lot of cases zoom is fine.

~~~
xorfish
Is it really that much better than it's open source alternative jitsi-meet?

~~~
socceroos
No it's not, I'd say Zoom is demonstrably worse; at least in the experiences
of people I've worked with.

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tibbydudeza
Still they are winning with their branding and their free 45 min tier ...
people don't talk about telecon anymore but rather they are having a Zoom
meeting.

But their UI really could use some rework ... it is really crappy.

~~~
sdoering
My SO has to use a multitude of tools, because all her university teachers use
different tools, because there was no standard up front.

She (and I have to agree sitting next to her) states that Zoom by far has the
best usability and user experience. It is easy to use, features are quite
detectable and stuff like virtual raised hands are great for teaching bigger
groups.

So I would say it is the best tool out there currently.

Personally I prefer Google Meet - but that is because I use it daily for work
and it became free only days ago.

~~~
teruakohatu
I am suffering through Zoom at university and I had no idea about virtual
raised hands existed, the UI could be improved.

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PeterStuer
All conferencing platforms have had issues. Zoom does seem to be fairly
responsive when it comes to vulnerabilities and security patching.

As for 'state actor' interference, that is generally called 'lawful
interception' when you drop the hype and FUD. I'm sure Zoom does/will comply
with those regulations just like all the others.

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Rerarom
I like how they say that they're sorry they referred to them as people.

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andrewzah
I have had very few problems with zoom over the last 2 years. My company has
always used it, with people connecting from various linux, windows, and apple
machines. We are all remote, and have pair-programmed via screensharing for
hours with zero issues.

As government contractors we'll most likely have to switch due it to being
banned by the pentagon [0] (bad optics), so I guess we'll use jitsi, but it's
quite unfortunate.

All of the DnD people I know are switching to it because it... just works. We
haven't had any issues there either, but I can't speak about calls with ~15+
people.

I don't really like any of the alternatives: gotomeeting, chime, bluejeans,
webex, discord, or god forbid, skype.

[0]: [https://www.stripes.com/news/us/zoom-for-official-use-is-
no-...](https://www.stripes.com/news/us/zoom-for-official-use-is-no-longer-an-
option-for-dod-personnel-report-says-1.625973)

------
maallooc
Whenever I'm using Zoom I'm astounded by how it works. Seriously. What black
magic are they performing? It works remarkably well. Just like magic.

I've used Skype, Google hangout and others. They are like 1-2 years behind
Zoom.

Poor encryption? China? Security issues? Whatever. It just works unlike
others.

~~~
upofadown
>What black magic are they performing?

They run all the traffic through their servers to avoid the inevitable NAT
issues. So the magic is probably having a while lot of money to buy enough
server capacity and bandwidth so that they never run short.

~~~
fock
and then they combine that with an insistence on using their un-sandboxed app.
Well, seems like the same magic, the yahoo-toolbar used back in the day...

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JackPoach
Regular folks don't care. Zoom is currently, waaay better than anything else,
although may be not for long. But venture capitalists and investors have their
egos. It's funny to have the same fight (DAU and how engaged users really are)
between Slack and MS Teams.

~~~
ChrisMarshallNY
I’ve written video software.

Zoom’s client blows away anything that I’ve seen from anyone else -by a
significant margin.

When you can have 30 active video thumbnails on a single screen, with very
little latency, on a humbly-specced machine, and the fan doesn’t even kick in,
you have some impressive work.

~~~
icebraining
I have wondered if they're combining them on the server-side and just pushing
a single stream to the client. Would that be detectable?

~~~
robszumski
I use BlueJeans at work is this is what they do. I'm not so sure that Zoom is
doing this. The side effects are that it heavily restricts what kinds of
layouts you can use, and you will frequently see everyone's face go pixelated
in a way thats super clear it's a single stream. Stuff like BlueJeans will
only show you at most 9 users in a grid, even if more than 9 have video on.
They will never have rows of 3 and then a row of two users. I don't see this
behavior with Zoom but I only use it about once a month for random meetings.

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KrilleB
This was expected already, anyway it's better to use jitsi, better security
and privacy

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sadfev
I prefer Teams or Skype for Business, they works best.

I don’t like the zoom UI or setup

------
redis_mlc
Funny how they admit that AFTER their IPO.

Lawyers: get your securities class action lawsuit in!

~~~
detaro
They made the statement they corrected less than two weeks ago. How is their
IPO last year relevant?

------
mr_gibbins
Article sponsored by Microsoft, Google.

~~~
bengale
There does seem to be quite the media campaign against zoom. Interestingly its
highlighting that strange divide between those of us that follow 'tech news'
and those that don't. I've seen a few of the tech types try and get people to
switch away from zoom with very little success over the last few weeks, no-one
outside of this sphere seems to give even the slightest damn about what's
being briefed to the tech media.

------
7777fps
They apparently have 300M daily meeting participants which is actually more
impressive than this headline.

~~~
sdan
Its 3x what Google Meet reported in their recent blog post, just for context.

~~~
neuronic
I am a fairly young consultant and have initially advocated against Zoom due
to the glaring privacy issues.

Obviously to no avail. Nobody cares. People just want to open a service and
have it work and Zoom excels at that. As Teams was already there for my large
enterprise client, we tried that at first but nope. Has issues with screen
sharing and makes problems even with less than a dozen users.

I never had any Zoom connection issues and among my consultant company and my
client I have participated in Zoom meetings with 200-300 people (we did some
events digitally) with absolutely zero issues. Grid view is amazing as well.

Jitsi exists but I couldn't even convince a single person to switch for more
than one session. Zoom works and nothing else counts. In Europe I don't know
any company that would get Google licenses for Meet due to ... Google being
Google.

It's all Zoom (professional & private) and Houseparty (private).

~~~
teruakohatu
I have had plenty of issue with Zoom. Quality being bad, people not
understanding the interface and my university had people zoom-bombing or
whatever it is called. I recently accidently logged into a session with the
wrong credentials (whatever Zoom defaulted to, not my official uni login) and
everyone thought I was zoom-bombing them. I couldn't understand why I was
being cross-questioned by people in the session.

Unfortunately the media have pushed zoom so hard that everyone assumes it is
the best option and don't want to hear of anything else.

~~~
codegladiator
> Quality being bad, people not understanding the interface

Honestly hearing this complain about zoom for the first time. I have never
seen anyone complain about quality of meet or the interface (more than a 100
people from different teams).

~~~
teruakohatu
I am in New Zealand so distance may have been a factor. I haven't had problems
in a couple of weeks.

