Is Zoom audited? Zoom had been lying for about having end-to-end encryption, for example, until they were caught by the US Federal Trade Commission. Surely, something like that would have been discovered earlier in an audit, if they were audited and the audits were worth something.
They were also sending data to third parties like Facebook and Google through their SDKs.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/11/zoom-lied-to-use...
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/08/zoom-to-pay-85m-...
There are so many alternatives, how is it Zoom has any business at all?
Zoom was the first videoconferencing software I experienced where the first 15 minutes of the meeting was not spent with "can you see me," "can you hear me," some people falling back to dialing in to a speakerphone, and one or more out-of-band calls to various participants to troubleshoot problems.
Zoom was click a link. And it worked. Nobody cared much about anything else beyond that.
There are only two videoconferencing platforms I've never had any problems with: Zoom and Google Meet. I don't trust either company, but sometimes you just have to get your work done.
I often call it "golf-course-ware" the sales person goes golfing with the executive, they discuss features and prices and discounts ober the match and the executive typically doesn't have to use the software but only their employees or the assistant.
Interestingly Zoom for me was a game changer in usability and it spread during pandemic, when executives where at home partially without their physical conference room with video conf setup and without assistant.
Anecdotally, privacy/security seem to be on the bottom of the stack. Platform support and necessity for work are above them all.
For the vast majority of users, price beats UX. If a company can keep their app free by selling user data, they will out-compete paid alternatives, regardless of the UX.