Hey,
I agree with the issues @danarauz is bringing up.
My ideal communication stack is:
riot.im for chat,
jitsi for conferences,
etherpad for note-taking.
In practice, I use all the things ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
My desire is to help increase adoption of FOSS tools used across society, from our medical devices (like OpenBCI, OpenEIT, etc), our security devices (SoloKeys and OpenSK), our communication tools, etc.
So all the words that follow are coming from within that 'context'
Due to an increased presence in 'virtual meetings', I've been wanting to create my own jitsi server (following the docs here:
https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet/blob/master/doc/quick-install.md ) and integrating it with etherpad to help the SF NeurotechX meetups migrate from Zoom (the group also uses Slack, but it will be much harder to migrate them off of that platform, due to social + historical reasons).
If anyone wants access to it, and has a reason like wanting a more secure platform to host meetings on, feel free to reach out. As well as if you want technical advice on how to set this up. It should be easy if you have a credit card or a raspberry pi (or old laptop..etc). Noisebridge could have a
meet.noisebridge.info jitsi service.
I encourage "going the opensource + self-hosted route" when possible for these kinds of organizational tools--especially if it can be conceived of as an educational and supportive activity. The opensource model also has advantages of lower operational cost in the long run. And supporting an opensource project is just a really great thing in general, whether it's through code/bug/document contributions, hosting, educating, financially supporting, etc. It's always great to be a part of a cool community.
And just a little message about the sponsors:
Slack runs out of messages in the free plan, which is information loss for the user (but not for slack).
And privacy has a cost, Google and Facebook do not profit on scraps--they feast on the juicy morsels that are us mortals.
Zoom seems to be something else entirely with regards to how they've built such an oddly persistent insecure service, there are two specific examples that are etched in recent memory:
- July 2019, APPLE FORCED TO REMOVE INSECURE ZOOM APP --
techcrunch article,
initial post of vulnerability + timelineYou can never fully trust a closed source company, no
The citizenlab report would actually be a great topic probably for the cryptoparty being held tomorrow on Zoom.