cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/7363991
While Jitsi is open-source, most people use the platform they provide, meet.jit.si, for immediate conference calls. They have now introduced a “Know Your Customer” policy and require at least one of the attendees to log in with a Facebook, Github (Microsoft), or Google account.
One option to avoid this is to self-host, but then you’ll be identifiable via your domain and have to maintain a server.
As a true alternative to Jitsi, there’s jami.net. It is a decentralized conference app, free open-source, and account creation is optional. It’s available for all major platforms (Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android), including on F-Droid.
That is a massive disappointment. Hopefully Element gets their video calls sorted. Why can I not just have privacy tools that I can use? Why are the good ones taken away?
Short answer is that a lot of privacy-focused tools get abused like hell and put these companies in an untenable position. It sounds like Jitsi had something fairly bad happening that would’ve put them in a regulatory pinch.
But the companies chosen for login is a slap in the face of anyone who cares about privacy.
If it is e2e encrypted, why would this change mitigate what they are concerned about?
“Slap in the face” is a bit dramatic when this doesn’t impact the truly private version of this software, the version you host on a system you control.
I’m also not sure what end-to-end encryption has to do with this since preventing the sign up of an abusive user essentially addresses the issue. It’s probably not something they’d wanna do but I’d wager they were getting some subpoenas and/or warrants that they couldn’t provide much information for and LEOs were ratcheting up pressure. Unfortunately, the legal side of tech is more than “ha ha can’t do that, officer”.
Because privacy is not a lucrative business. And the opposite is incredibly lucrative.
So they abandoned what built them up. They sold out?
Kinda? It sounds like their platform was being used for unethical activity. But it’s like, you had to have seen that coming from the beginning, right?
I don’t remember Element using the Jitsi Team’s instance. Element.io had their own so this shouldn’t affect it’s Matrix users at all.
Yes. Jitsi was one of the best for a while. Secure and just works. I think Element wasn’t e2e encrypted while debugging but I’m guessing is close to usable. I mentioned it more as a FOSS alternative.