Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

Re:Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern by anon3280 on Friday August 28, 2020 @04:27PM (#24309558)

I laughed out loud while reading this article. The author sees some things so correctly, while completely missing the forest for the trees.

Author: A single California-based company, Zoom, is now the foundation for education access from elementary school up through graduate school.

Me: Hah. The 'foundation' for education for the last 100 years has been the US Government, which exerts so much power over the entire system.

Author: Another challenge is that Zoom is a relatively young company (founded in 2011) that has experienced some security-related growing pains.

Me: The US Gov. has experienced security-related growing pains, but at least Zoom doesn't kill tens of thousands of people around the world every year.

Author: In March 2020, the company was widely criticized for a dubious claim that it supported end-to-end encryption for videoconferences.

Me: At least Zoom doesn't have a track record of spending billions of dollars to subvert encryption technology, wiretap hundreds of millions of people, and then lies about it.

Author: There are plenty of alternatives to Zoom, including Skype, Webex, and GoToMeeting. The challenge of course, is that Zoom has benefited from an enormous network effect.

Me: Oh how I wish there were a less-violent alternative to the US Government. At least Zoom cannot enforce it's monopoly of certain services with violence and billions of dollars of money

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Re:Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern by trthomps on Friday August 28, 2020 @04:36PM (#24309652)

The US Government is representative of all voting American citizens, you cannot compare it to a private company that is run by people who are not elected.

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Re:Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern by anon3280 on Friday August 28, 2020 @05:44PM (#24310363)

I agree.

The US Government is pretty impervious to change. For example, people still get arrested for smoking weed. Most o America supports decriminalizing weed.

Why is it still illegal? Shouldn't the government enact policies that most of America agrees with?

I mean... don't most of us agree that if a private company were doing any of this stuff, they would lose all their customers ASAP:

- https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/09/judge-child-porn...

- https://www.reddit.com/r/baltimore/comments/5jt6k0/where_the...

- https://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/crime/sterling-correct...

- https://www.aufamily.com/forums/topic/156988-obama-nsa-discl...

- https://reason.com/2017/04/25/a-man-died-in-jail-after-getti...

- https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/what-happe...

I believe the burden of proof is on someone who thinks the US Government is a good representative of it's people.

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Re:Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern by trthomps on Friday August 28, 2020 @06:29PM (#24310980)

I was very careful to word my previous comment to say the US Government represents the voting population. In 2016 there were only 157M registered voters, and only 138M voted in the presidential election that year. The population of the US was 321M in 2016 making the US Government represent approximately 43% of the overall population at best, most elections have a far lower turnout.

I didn't say the system was fair, but it's still not a fair to compare a private company to how a government is supposed to function. Governments enforce laws and provide public services. You want things to change? vote for it.

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