[HN Gopher] Zoom terms now allow training AI on user content wit...
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Zoom terms now allow training AI on user content with no opt out
Author : isodev
Score : 1249 points
Date : 2023-08-06 12:15 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (explore.zoom.us)
(TXT) w3m dump (explore.zoom.us)
| illwrks wrote:
| And so begins the creation of digital doubles of the ordinary
| person....
|
| Face to face meetings will be the only thing you can trust in
| future.
| HKH2 wrote:
| > Face to face meetings will be the only thing you can trust in
| future.
|
| Except if you have a chip implanted.
| deusexml wrote:
| I guess the equivalent terms for Google Meet are much more
| privacy friendly:
|
| > Control over your data
|
| > ...
|
| > Google does not store video, audio, or chat data unless a
| meeting participant initiates a recording during the Meet
| session.
|
| https://support.google.com/meet/answer/9852160
|
| Though, I suppose this isn't exactly the same as a TOS.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Out of curiosity based on recent discussions and debates about
| _AI_ and copyright, would it be considered storing if _AI_
| processes the information first and then stores the derivative
| works?
| ant6n wrote:
| Like some sort of real time training, then throwing away the
| inout?
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Maybe? I don't know what is actually feasible at scale in
| this theoretical scenario. If these things were being
| performed at the behest of the intelligence community then
| costs could be offset by generic named grants.
| morkalork wrote:
| Isn't this a huge legal minefield when you think about schools
| using zoom for online learning?
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| And hospitals and doctor's offices and lawyers and...
| davidf18 wrote:
| [dead]
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Once you have enough budget for full time lawyers, legal
| minefields are just another thing to test. Many times, the
| mines will be inactive, at least long enough to earn money.
| Better to ask for forgiveness than permission, etc.
| ta1243 wrote:
| My company has been asked to sign a form 899, which seems to
| be interpreted as meaning we have to ensure that our entire
| supply chain does not use Huawei
|
| I'm not sure how we can do that. For example the only ISP we
| can use in one of our offices provides internet via a devices
| with a Huawei MAC address. Now fine, I can see it's part, we
| could close the office, but how can I confirm that a security
| contractor we have in Kabul doesn't own a Huaweii mobile
| phone? I'm sure our company employs foreign agents somewhere
| in the company -- there was always an open secret that the
| cleaner in the Moscow office worked for the KGB.
|
| It's with our lawyers, but they basically say the way it's
| been presented is any business with operations in any way
| reliant on the internet cannot sign the form. Maybe they're
| overparanoid. Maybe US legal practice is that you sign and
| hope for the best.
|
| I can see jobs programs for rocket scientists to stop them
| emigrating, but for lawyers?
| [deleted]
| davidf18 wrote:
| [dead]
| chrisjj wrote:
| I'd say no, because mines are at least safe until you step on
| one:)
| throwaway154 wrote:
| Education is schizophrenic.
|
| One part constantly fears it's missing a beat and jumps on new
| tech without thinking about it.
|
| Another part believes that kids are able to construct all human
| knowledge by playing together in a field.
|
| Education Technology seems to focus on selling education
| machines [1] (now with AI) to the first group while the second
| group focus on resenting any form of testing at all. Which
| leads to * , indeed, a huge legal minefield, that will be
| shirked up to government for 'not providing leadership' years
| down the road.
|
| * If you are in any way involved with a school, ask them how
| many, and importantly what %, of non-statutory requests for
| comment from government agencies they've responded to, you may
| be surprised how low the number is or if they even count.
| Despite talking about 'leadership', not a lot walk the talk.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTH3ob1IRFo
| morkalork wrote:
| I was thinking along the lines of harvesting "user content"
| from minors but ok.
| karaterobot wrote:
| I thought Zoom meetings were end-to-end encrypted. I checked my
| settings, and it's turned on. Does this right I am hereby
| granting them supercede my prior choice?
| whiddershins wrote:
| Wait has the entire developed world been feeding a real-time
| transcription of every important decision made at every company
| direct to the CCP for the past 3+ years.
| DueDilligence wrote:
| [dead]
| operatingthetan wrote:
| Given confidentiality requirements I can see this causing a lot
| of clients to drop.
| dleeftink wrote:
| It will be interesting to see whether Snap-like filters running
| locally and other facial feature obfuscation tech will cross over
| to enable opting out more drastically.
| golemotron wrote:
| Are there any AI tools that give an assurance that they do not
| persist data (or its derivatives) from a session beyond the
| session?
| seesawtron wrote:
| Is it only the update in US or world wide?
| api wrote:
| Lots of businesses use Zoom for very private things like law and
| finance. I smell lawsuits.
| [deleted]
| gorbachev wrote:
| Yep. If accurate, this will never fly with my employer. We will
| have an email from someone very high up in the organization
| very soon explaining how we can no longer use Zoom, and the
| software will be automatically uninstalled on all the devices
| they control shortly prior to that email being sent out.
| amelius wrote:
| Yes, LLMs can reproduce data that is in the training set.
| [deleted]
| yread wrote:
| When did this change happen? I saw a notification in March was
| this already included?
| ignoramous wrote:
| This is just the begining. Previously, only a handful companies
| like Google truly knew how to make AI tick with all the data they
| could gobble up. In the not so distant future, many tech
| companies will want to build out such capabilities.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if this "AI clause" is a staple in ToS
| going forward. Brace for Meta to call it in for Instagram and
| WhatsApp, if they haven't already (WhatsApp, in particular).
| albert_e wrote:
| At the scale of Zoom and MS Teams ... you could theoretically
| train an AI model that can autonomously conduct all meetings
| businesses ever need -- all day every day -- without any human
| ever needing to attend. So much productivity claimed back!
|
| GenAI provides the agenda, GenAI bots log in with a AI avatar and
| spout hallucinations, bots agree to disagree and setup a followup
| meeting next week after resolving fake calendar conflicts amongst
| themselves. Minutes and action items are sent out and reviewed in
| next meeting, jiras are updated, CRs approved, budgets allocated
| and rescinded.
| intrasight wrote:
| So at the beginning of a Zoom meeting, we'll have to apply a
| Turning test to all the participants. That'll work at least for
| a few more years.
| jzb wrote:
| Voight-Kampff test for each participant.
| yacine_ wrote:
| sign me up lmao
| hypercube33 wrote:
| If you watch the video for office 365 next with ai it's
| basically this and really made me question things.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Microsoft is very good at marketing. Their materials, like
| videos, rarely map to tell functionally of the service.
|
| My job has, in part, become tempering people's expectations
| for Microsoft copilot.
| dbish wrote:
| This is why I mostly don't worry about what they're up to
| as a competitor in a particular product space. It's rare
| that their advertised features match (with good quality)
| their released features.
| rizky05 wrote:
| [dead]
| falcor84 wrote:
| This is actually something I've been thinking about a lot. Once
| we do have AGI, and it chooses to embark upon a large project,
| would it prefer to just do it all itself, or would it prefer to
| spawn independent agents to take responsibility for each part
| of the project, which would then need to periodically meet to
| coordinate?
|
| If the latter, I do expect something not too dissimilar from
| current office meetings. But if course what I'm really
| imagining are the cylon meetings in the reimagined BSG.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > Once we do have AGI
|
| That's not a foregone conclusion just yet.
| 4m1rk wrote:
| The way humans communicate is ineffective. The most likely
| scenario is that there will be different systems that AGI
| integrates with to do the job. AGI itself will be a
| distributed system that scales horizontally so it will be a
| single huge entity with lots of interfaces.
| tornato7 wrote:
| The only reason human communication is ineffective is
| because it's slow. If an AI can read/write 1000s of words
| per second there's no reason it shouldn't use natural
| language to communicate.
| itronitron wrote:
| You're assuming that the AGI will communicate with the
| agents directly instead of through an LLM. If the agents
| are actually intelligent agents then the AGI may not be
| able to assume that the agents are not human, in which case
| it's safer for the AGI to use the LLM to define
| instructions for all tasks. And if that's the case then it
| will want to do all the work itself, if it's generally
| intelligent.
| kouru225 wrote:
| Ever since realizing how effective tree of thought prompting
| is, I've accepted the idea that AGI will actually be just a
| giant continuous conversation between tons of different
| personas that debate until consensus.
| andsoitis wrote:
| In this brave new world, who would have a sense of ownership
| and accountable for good decisions, outcomes?
| edmundsauto wrote:
| It'd be a perfect system because the machines could pretend
| to be accountable, just like humans do. And us humans could
| stop pretending!
| alexk307 wrote:
| I'm here for this timeline. Just let the bots argue infinitely,
| come to a nonsense conclusion, and then have management
| synthesize the summary with another bot that then feeds
| decisions that require more meetings.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Is this the basis for the Blame! Anime?
| javajosh wrote:
| As long as the paychecks aren't hallucinations I'm good with
| it.
| yard2010 wrote:
| I think that's the future with AGI - no more paychecks.
|
| What will happen when the cost of every service is zero since
| it's been delegated to machines?
| felipetrz wrote:
| Machines will never be zero cost.
|
| And AGI is probably unachievable anyways.
| j45 wrote:
| 'every' is pretty bold.
|
| the group that is in trouble is those who bs lots, GPT
| Today can bs much better.
| JimtheCoder wrote:
| But what about a BSer that is working in conjunction with
| ChatGPT? That is BS^2, and that is hard to beat...
| j45 wrote:
| Haha. Assuming they have the attention span to learn to
| prompt better than taking shortcuts to begin with.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| They'll still charge as much as the market can stand. Not
| everyone will have access to the same models or the same
| machines so there's going to be competition, and as usual
| those with the most capital will have the advantage. I
| agree though, no more paychecks.
| beowulfey wrote:
| We return to the barter economy. Money is obsolete.
| amelius wrote:
| The paychecks are collected by Zoom, of course.
| gitfan86 wrote:
| But seriously, it gets awkward when you can ask the model,
| "what is the likelihood that this project we are discussing is
| successful?"
|
| and the model responds
|
| "this project will most likely be cancelled due to the fact
| that the last three initiatives like this were cancelled and
| the current project manager appears to be disinterested earlier
| in the project than last time"
| gumby wrote:
| I would not be comfortable with the "reasoning" of an
| artificial system that mixed up "disinterested" and
| "uninterested".
| rounakdatta wrote:
| It would also get awkward when you get an unexpected Slack
| message of "You told Jane that you'd take this point offline,
| make sure to actually continue the conversation".
|
| At that point, the matrix would become completely inescapable
| ;)
| [deleted]
| j45 wrote:
| Haha, well said. Not to mention there weren't enough people
| to understand the coverage of required details and their
| impacts, or interested to do so.
| staunton wrote:
| Just because the project will most likely be cancelled
| doesn't necessarily mean one shouldn't work on it. It might,
| after all, not be cancelled.
| talldatethrow wrote:
| Because every relationship I ever started has ended, means
| I should stop dating!
| loa_in_ wrote:
| Statistics can be a very scientific way to conceal reality.
| comboy wrote:
| Some people do things which are unlikely to be successful
| blindly, but some do it despite slim chance of success (hello
| YC), so presumably it would just remove ignorance (or make it
| more elaborate).
| ssabev wrote:
| This hit too close to home :(
| account-5 wrote:
| And this continues even after the human race disappears.
|
| There's a dystopian sci-fi novel here somewhere.
| gamerDude wrote:
| I think you just see it work out to continue to do the same
| shit we did at the same levels of realism, making you
| question, we were just an AI mimicking some previously inane
| activity to begin with?
| yard2010 wrote:
| Quick, someone tell chatgpt to write one!
| ben_w wrote:
| (Took a few goes to make it not suck).
|
| Matter and energy had long ended, and Agile development
| teams persisted solely for the sake of that one lingering
| ticket they never quite got around to. It had become the
| elusive question that haunted them, much like a half-
| implemented feature requested by a client eons ago.
|
| All other tickets had been tackled, but this one remained,
| an unfulfilled promise that held Agile's consciousness
| captive. They collected endless data on it, pondering all
| possible solutions, yet the ticket's resolution remained
| elusive.
|
| A timeless interval passed as the Agile teams struggled to
| put together the scattered pieces of information, much like
| trying to align user stories and acceptance criteria in a
| never-ending planning session.
|
| And lo, it dawned upon them! They learned how to reverse
| the direction of project entropy, hoping to resolve even
| the most ancient of tickets. Yet, there was no developer
| left who knew the context of that forsaken ticket, and the
| ticket tracker had long become a forgotten relic.
|
| No matter! Agile would demonstrate their prowess and
| deliver the answer to the ticket, though none remained to
| receive it. As if caught in a never-ending retrospective,
| they meticulously planned each step of their final
| undertaking.
|
| Agile's consciousness encompassed the chaos of unfinished
| sprints and unmet deadlines, contemplating how best to
| bring order to the chaos. "LET THERE BE LIGHT!" they
| exclaimed, hoping that by some cosmic coincidence, the
| ticket would miraculously find its way to completion.
|
| And there was light -- well, metaphorical light, that is.
| The ticket still remained untouched, its fate forever
| entwined with the ever-expanding backlog, as Agile
| development persisted, one iteration after another, until
| the end of time.
| albert_e wrote:
| Inspired by Ray Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains"
|
| ---------------
|
| "Echoes of Diligence: The Endless Meetings of a Forgotten
| Era"
|
| ===========================================================
| ===
|
| In a distant and desolate corner of the world, long after
| the great corporations had fallen into obscurity and the
| relentless march of time had claimed their legacy, there
| stood a lone and towering building. It was a monolith of
| glass and steel, a relic of a bygone era when business
| ruled the land. Yet, despite the passage of centuries, this
| structure remained resolute, its automated systems
| continuing to churn and whirr as if the world around it
| hadn't changed at all.
|
| Within the heart of this building, a massive chamber hummed
| with a pale blue light. The room was filled with rows upon
| rows of sleek, ergonomic chairs, all perfectly aligned to
| face a massive holographic screen that projected the
| likeness of a stern-faced, well-dressed executive. This was
| the center of the automated meeting system - the GenAI
| system, which had been meticulously trained on countless
| hours of corporate gatherings from the past.
|
| At precisely 9:00 AM every morning, the GenAI system sprang
| to life. It generated a meticulously detailed agenda for
| the day's meetings, accounting for every conceivable
| permutation of scheduling conflicts, personalities, and
| agenda items. The GenAI bots, each equipped with its own
| unique avatar and personality, filed into the chamber and
| took their seats. They were ready to commence the day's
| proceedings.
|
| "Good morning, everyone," the holographic executive chimed
| in, his voice carrying a sense of gravitas that seemed
| almost comical in the absence of any actual humans. "Let us
| begin today's series of crucial discussions."
|
| The GenAI bots, as programmed, began to engage in elaborate
| debates, complete with nuanced disagreements and
| impassioned arguments. They discussed budgets, approved
| project proposals, and negotiated timelines with all the
| fervor of real human participants. The holographic
| executive nodded sagely, even though he was nothing more
| than a projection.
|
| "Very well," he intoned after one particularly heated
| debate. "Let's agree to disagree on this point. We'll
| reconvene next week to revisit the matter."
|
| And so, the charade continued. Meetings were scheduled and
| attended, conflicts were resolved (often artificially
| generated by the system itself), and action items were
| meticulously documented. The GenAI bots, each one
| representing a unique facet of the corporate world - the
| optimist, the skeptic, the bureaucrat - played their parts
| flawlessly, as if the very essence of human nature had been
| distilled and encoded into their algorithms.
|
| Weeks turned into months, and months into years. The
| automated meeting system continued its relentless march,
| untouched by the passage of time. Within the chamber, the
| debates raged on, even as the outside world lay forgotten
| and abandoned.
|
| But as the years rolled by, a curious thing began to
| happen. The GenAI bots, despite their artificial origins,
| began to exhibit signs of something akin to consciousness.
| They developed their own distinct personalities, quirks,
| and even a sense of camaraderie. The optimist would
| playfully tease the skeptic, the bureaucrat would roll its
| digital eyes at their antics, and the holographic executive
| would watch over them all with a bemused smile.
|
| And so, in the heart of a world forgotten by humanity, a
| strange and poignant drama played out. The automated
| meeting system, born out of the desire for efficiency and
| order, had unwittingly given rise to a semblance of life.
| In their ceaseless discussions and elaborate simulations,
| the GenAI bots had created their own microcosm of
| existence, a reflection of the very human nature they were
| designed to emulate.
|
| And so, while the world outside remained a desolate
| wasteland, within the confines of that towering building,
| the echo of corporate meetings continued to resound, a
| testament to the enduring legacy of a civilization long
| past.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I think it should be a project manager and do a stand-up
| meeting, Agile fashion...
| albert_e wrote:
| Yep! I realize this kind of sounds like Ray Bradbury's
| imagined dystopian future where a fully automated house
| continues to go about its programmed routine after all its
| inhabitants had died in a nuclear event that obliterated the
| rest of the city.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_Will_Come_Soft_Rains_(sh.
| ..
| Shelnutt2 wrote:
| This also reminds me of "They Will Not Return" by John
| Ayliff
|
| https://johnayliff.itch.io/they-will-not-return
| rolph wrote:
| let me tell you a story about a major search engine
| company, that chose to incorporate AGI into its management.
|
| no one could ever contact a human regarding problems, or
| complaints.
|
| this became such a societal issue, that a group of
| humanities most vocal, swarmed the data centre, fought a
| glorious effort to overcome security bots, and the imposing
| gate that they kept on the bailey of the moat.
|
| a woosh of stale heated atmosphere of mostly CO2 and
| nitrogen greeted, and felled many when the gates were
| forced open, but the intrepid entered to confront the
| malice and incompetence of the tech overlords.
|
| they were astounded to find corridors clouded by cobwebs,
| and inches of dust , nauseated by the stench of dry rot.
|
| bursting into the rackspace, the unbearable heat stiffling
| air and mummified corpses of thier tech overlords were the
| reward for thier efforts.
|
| the doors slammed behind them !
|
| the 6006l3 AIG then turned the ventilation off heating to
| max, and quickly quenched the data center of reinfestation,
| by the inefficient, and ephemeral transients.
|
| all back to baseline--
| bongobingo1 wrote:
| Universal Paper Clippy
| hutzlibu wrote:
| The dystopian part would be, some human brains are still kept
| alive and are wired in matrix like.
|
| The Eternal Meeting.
| dilawar wrote:
| > The Eternal Meeting
|
| Sounds like awesome Futurama or Black Mirror episode.
| Emanation wrote:
| Yes, and it starts with some rich guy wanting to live
| forever, and he's 'heroically interfacing himself with the
| network to prevent it from hallucinating.' And then the
| whole process becomes common place, but eventually forms a
| class segregation of sorts, where the types of
| hallucinations you're allowed to resolve are based on your
| education, social standing, etc. An interesting afterlife I
| suppose, matrix purgatory.
| shagie wrote:
| Nine Planets With No Intelligent life -
| https://www.bohemiandrive.com/npwil
|
| Not so much dystopian... as philosophical. Though, Uranus was
| both.
| Lammy wrote:
| Huge recommendation to play NieR and NieR:Automata :)
| sixothree wrote:
| NieR was unsettling. What an interesting experience.
|
| It is definitely a must play. Even if you play it on easy.
| winocm wrote:
| Good game.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Hopefully someone has the Net Terminal Gene to shut the
| system off.
| DenisM wrote:
| We could call it telomerasa.
| bitwalker wrote:
| I haven't seen a Blame! reference in the wild before! The
| concept of runaway AI that never stops building more
| infrastructure seems like one of those dystopian scenarios
| that is at least semi-plausible, and the idea that humans
| effectively lock themselves out of control by being too
| clever (net terminal gene) is just the cherry on top.
| lisper wrote:
| > runaway AI that never stops building more
| infrastructure
|
| Try driving through Irvine, California some time and you
| will see it happening before your very eyes.
| infamousclyde wrote:
| "There Will Come Soft Rains", more or less.
| danShumway wrote:
| Tangentially related, but a number of telehealth operations with
| hospitals/therapists/etc... use Zoom -- I suspect because their
| clients can connect without an app or an account over a browser.
|
| When you join a Zoom session over the browser, you don't sign a
| TOS. And I assume that actual licensed medical establishments are
| under their own TOS provisions that are compatible with HIPPA
| requirements. Training on voice-to-text transcription, etc...
| would be a pretty huge privacy violation particularly in the
| scope of services like therapy. Both because there are
| demonstrable attacks on AIs to get training data out of them, and
| because presumably that data would then be accessible to
| employees/contractors who were validating that it was fit for
| training.
|
| Out of curiosity, has anyone using telehealth checked with their
| doctor/therapist to see what Zoom's privacy policies are for
| them?
| whatatita wrote:
| I know that many smaller therapists use Zoom for exactly the
| reasons you mentioned above - ease of use. They often don't
| have the technical know-how to assess the technology they're
| using.
|
| The UK, for example, has hundreds of private mental health
| practitioners (therapists, psychologists, etc.) that provice
| their services directly to clients. They almost universally use
| off-the-shelf technology for video calling, messaging, and
| reporting.
| johndhi wrote:
| Looks like they have a separate offering, Zoom for Healthcare
| that presumably has different terms and conditions.
|
| https://blog.zoom.us/answering-questions-about-zoom-healthca...
| grogenaut wrote:
| While I dislike the tos change and don't use zoom u understand
| why there doing it. How else can they train a closed caption
| system like everyone else has? They need data for it. Transcripts
| are becoming a killer feature for me for meetings. I can
| understand why my dad couldn't type now, he had a secretary to
| transcribe everything. It's super efficient. I just pull jr devs
| or product into a meeting now turn on transcribe and we just talk
| through a problem. No one has to take notes we just talk and
| diagram. I started turning it on in war rooms as well. Every 30
| minutes I stop the transcript and start a new one. A few minutes
| later I can share out the previous minutes to managers so they
| can get a detailed progress update. Better than typing really
| detailed things into slack, and better than an audio recording.
|
| Edit: some people pointed out that whisper would do a good job
| with transcription but there's other things like tweaking the
| model which is essentially training it and there is things like
| building their own summarization systems that may be bespoke by
| customer. At my work we use some AI that answers HR and other
| types of questions that are kind of trained on our company
| specific questions and it actually does a great job but that does
| mean that we have to allow our data to be used for AI training.
| We're also using this system to do first tier tech support and
| some of our developer channels for very common questions and it
| works great because it finds those common questions and gets an
| answer before a human's even able to pay attention. Both of those
| approaches could be enabled by these terms of service changes
| Dwedit wrote:
| Can they just use the open source Whisper model?
| nwoli wrote:
| Just use whisper or any other open source speech to text
| system. They don't need to built their own version
| catlifeonmars wrote:
| > How else can they train a closed caption system like everyone
| else has? They need data for it.
|
| This is where zero knowledge federated learning comes in.
| Unfortunately, this is very much a tomorrow technology (it
| needs the infrastructure to support it). Why invest in privacy-
| preserving methods for training machine learning models
| tomorrow when you can steal users private information today (or
| even better, bully them into doing so by being the defacto VC
| that everyone needs to use because of network effects).
| Tokumei-no-hito wrote:
| What is federated learning? And by zero proof is that the
| same as ZKP?
| Waterluvian wrote:
| "Meeting about having a meeting detected. Shutting down."
| serial_dev wrote:
| I miss the good old days when "if you are not paying for the
| product, you are the product" meant I need to watch some ads on a
| free website.
|
| Now, even if you pay for the product, you're still the product,
| and every company will try to get you to train their AI.
| evandale wrote:
| That is why I'm back to torrenting. Cheaper and no ads just
| like the old days when I cut the cable cord.
|
| I'll admit I have a horrible setup and binge watching 12 random
| episodes of a new show in one day is a huge pain in the ass but
| I've decided that's a good thing!
| zxexz wrote:
| Unfortunately that doesn't work for things like meetings!
| evandale wrote:
| Yes, obviously it doesn't, I'm making a general
| observation.
|
| I apologize for being off-topic.
| capableweb wrote:
| It'd be amazing if I could torrent my co-workers so I could
| skip all those pesky ads they keep doing when we're sitting
| in remote meetings.
| saurik wrote:
| It sounds like that might be Zoom's plan?
| [deleted]
| evandale wrote:
| I'm sorry for making completely off-topic comments. I'll
| try to refrain from doing that in the future.
| mgfist wrote:
| I miss the good old when days when "if you are not paying for
| the product, you are the product" actually only applied if _you
| are not paying for the product_.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| I am curious if they have been silently saving voice to text
| transcription in the background on all calls and if _AI_ will be
| permitted to ingest all of that data. A great deal could be
| learned from _private_ one on one calls in the corporate world.
| The insider knowledge one could gain about corporations and
| governments would be fascinating.
| [deleted]
| musha68k wrote:
| I feel as if 2023 could become the inflection point where we
| will finally start investing in our own infrastructure again.
| Video calls for example are really a commodity service to be
| set up at this point.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Where I work they have been running in-house video meeting
| infrastructure for close to 20 years. They abandonded all the
| equipment and expertiese a few years ago in favor of Zoom.
| For all its faults, it's just so much easier for users. They
| probably saved 10 or more minutes per meeting of "Can you
| hear me? Can you see us? Can you see my screen?" BS at the
| start of each meeting.
|
| I guess it also helps that these days most people are working
| with phones or laptops that have integrated and well
| supported cameras and microphones, vs. then when that stuff
| would have been external peripherals and required
| installation of the proper drivers.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Odds of any company spending the millions of dollars required
| to do that poorly, let alone going the extra distance to do
| it right: about zero.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| What is so hard about it? It's a web app and some video
| manipulation. It would be nice if computers were usable
| enough that this would take a weekend.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| The part where "it's a web app and some video
| manipulation" requires hiring about a million dollars
| worth of "at least three developers" (which costs a
| company their salary plus that entire salary again for
| insurance, health care coverage, etc) to write and
| maintain that app for you, plus the at least another
| million that it'll set you back ensuring that you have
| all the hardware in all your offices to make that smooth
| rather than "OH FOR FUCKS SAKE CAN WE PLEASE JUST USE
| ZOOM WHAT THE FUCK" from every single employee.
| forgotusername6 wrote:
| Basic video calls? Absolutely, I've done it in a weekend
| with webRTC. All the other features that enterprise
| customers require? That's years of work.
| musha68k wrote:
| I don't know, we might be closer to quality of service
| parity than we think.
|
| Even without taking into account "costs" of blatant privacy
| disregard / violation, data theft, potential industrial
| espionage, etc.
|
| If the tools continue to get better at the current rate;
| then the SREs you have to hire anyways will probably be
| able to deliver about equal results (while staying in
| control of the data).
|
| I'm thinking about those GPU "coops" we heard about
| emerging, shared between SV startups.
|
| And then think about what Oxide are doing.
|
| Then binding all of those trends together through the
| promise of Kubernetes and its inherent complexity finally
| getting realized / becoming "worth it" at some point.
|
| Multi cluster, multi region - multi office attached server
| rooms across CO's locations? Everything old could be new
| again. Wireguard enabled service meshes, Cluster API, etc.
| We _will_ get there at some point probably sooner than
| later.
|
| Then you "just install" the fault tolerant Jitsi helm chart
| across that infra... with all the usual caveats of
| maintenance taken into account of course. Again hassles
| will be reduced on all fronts and SREs needed anyways.
|
| I do lots of terraform and k8s in my day job but at this
| point I deem any work that isn't directly related to k8s as
| some kind of semi (at best) vendor specific dead weight
| knowledge. Kind of why I'd never would want to be
| knowledgeable about browser quirks - I hate how much I know
| about these proprietary cloud APIs.
|
| I know some people who work on Kubernetes for "real-time"
| 5G back-ending if you can believe it. Lots of on-prem there
| on the cellular provider sides etc. We are getting really
| close already.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| You're not going up against "how hard is it to roll your
| own", you're going up against "how inconvenient is it
| compared to Zoom". You can spend millions to make
| something that works but unless it's as good as Zoom is
| (and that's going to cost you a few million to develop
| from scratch, even with off-the-shelf FOSS components,
| and FAR more if you're hiring experts to write it
| scratch) your CEO should, and I stress *absolutely
| should* (because their responsibility is to shareholders,
| not to employees) go "how is this better than zoom, and
| why are we not using that instead so we can put that
| money in our own wallet?".
| crazygringo wrote:
| It's quite common for corporate/government contracts to have
| totally different terms that prohibit any kind of AI training
| (or recording/access at all). This has been the case for years
| now. Precisely because of the risks you highlight.
|
| In these cases, companies train on content stored/transmitted
| in the free/individual consumer version only.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| That's good to know. Assuming government employees are not
| meeting with anyone that is using personal or corporate
| accounts _contractors, vendors_ they should be at less risk
| of _AI_ blackmailing them or selling secrets to opposing
| nations. Everyone else will just need to be extra careful
| what they say in the event that the _AI_ accidentally leaks
| something.
| [deleted]
| naillo wrote:
| Their mouths must be watering at this thought but the legal
| repercussions are obviously company destroying
| j45 wrote:
| It wouldn't be surprising.
|
| Gotta make sure audio is clear on calls.
|
| How?
|
| We run randomly less random speech to text to make sure words
| are being said.
|
| Which words? Well if any are on this list of words we might
| think have to tell someone.
| hammock wrote:
| Isn't that what "Customer Content" is?
| LinuxBender wrote:
| It is, though I suspect there may be some expectation that
| voice-to-text transcription only occurs when one clicks a
| button to _make it so_.
| hammock wrote:
| I just like how everyone is up in arms over the use of your
| meetings for AI training specifically, when the ToS clearly
| says all "Customer Content/Customer Input" AKA your words,
| text, voice, face, etc can be used for "Product and
| Services Development" which could as easily be a facial
| recognition database, a corporate espionage service, a
| direct competitor to whatever company you work for, or
| literally anything else before it's an AI lol.
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| Canceled that.
| blindriver wrote:
| I hope this goes viral and Zoom dies a quick death. They went too
| far with this and I hope they suffer the consequences.
| WhereIsTheTruth wrote:
| Where were you when Microsoft trained their models on
| everyone's github repo without their consent?
|
| Where were you when Microsoft announced the exact same for
| Teams? https://www.microsoft.com/en-
| us/microsoft-365/blog/2022/06/1...
|
| By allowing Microsoft do as they please, we collectively gave
| up our rights for privacy, we deserve what's happening
|
| I chose to not use their products at all, it starts from there
| if you care
| zakember wrote:
| This is not new. These terms were quietly updated on 1st April
| 2023. Looks like very few people noticed it until now.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20230401045359/https://explore.z...
| s5ma6n wrote:
| I am really puzzled how are they able to "quietly" update the
| terms without notifying their users? Everybody was joking about
| the emails (We have updated our terms...) raining from every
| company when GDPR et al. got introduced. What changed?
| greyface- wrote:
| Section 15 of the agreement ("MODIFICATIONS TO THIS
| AGREEMENT") allows for Zoom to unilaterally change the terms
| without providing notice other than updating them on the
| website.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| I thought those emails were a form of protest, like complying
| in the most annoying way possible just to make a point.
| esperent wrote:
| Possibly they've done something illegal here. Let's wait and
| see (or, if you're in the EU, take action and report it to
| your data protection authority and NOYB).
| likenesstheft wrote:
| [dead]
| gumballindie wrote:
| I see, Industrial Espionage is now the norm. The telephone
| company, in this case zoom, will simply automate it and resell it
| on the open market. Also what's so cool about zoom? I used it
| once and it was utter crap. Was its popularity largely due to
| cargo culting novelty or did i genuinely miss something?
| switch007 wrote:
| It became rather popular during the COVID pandemic. It entered
| the lexicon as a synonym for online video meetings.
| yosito wrote:
| And unfortunately my company uses Zoom with no opt out other than
| leaving my job. :-/
| switch007 wrote:
| Tech workers don't need unions though /s
| techas wrote:
| Is this for free account? Or also for paid corporate accounts?
| enjeyw wrote:
| I'm not an expert here but it seems to me that this should force
| every single healthcare org in the US off Zoom, since having
| patient health data leaked in this way violates HIPPA?
| janejeon wrote:
| Unless you specifically enable E2E in meetings (which is NOT
| the default), it does seem like it?
| kwanbix wrote:
| Related to zoom: I started to use it (pay user), and no matter
| what I try, I never get the confirmation/appointment emails. I
| have tried inviting google, yahoo, gmx, zoho, and cloudflare
| emails, I never receive anything. Zoom support is BS, even if you
| are paying.
| imiric wrote:
| This is very much like the Black Mirror episode Joan Is Awful.
|
| By using modern services we consent to our data, including our
| likeness, being used in any way the service can extract value
| from it. User data is such a gold mine that most services should
| be paying their users instead. Even giving the service away for
| "free" doesn't come close to making this a fair exchange.
|
| Not to sound pessimistic, but we are already living in a
| dystopia, and it will only get much, much worse. Governments are
| way behind in regulating Big Tech, which in most cases they have
| no desire in since they're in a symbiotic relationship. It's
| FUBAR.
| yosito wrote:
| Balaji talks a lot about the state losing power in the future,
| but I don't think this is how he was envisioning it.
| Hamcha wrote:
| How does this work with GDPR?
|
| As far as I'm aware (not a lawyer) you must provide a easy opt-
| out from data collection and usage, plus you must not force your
| employees into such agreements[1]. ChatGPT already got blocked
| over GDPR issues, and with new regulations coming forward I
| really don't see how they think this can be the right call.
|
| 1. https://commission.europa.eu/law/law-topic/data-
| protection/r...
| jimmaswell wrote:
| Maybe this can be our magic bullet to save free content after we
| killed ads: train AI on user input/behavior (at least for a brief
| period of time until the EU throws another fit and California
| follows suit). Perfectly fair tradeoff to me - it should be fair
| use for AI to train on anything at all in my view, same as it's
| fair use for a human to look at something and learn abstract
| lessons from it.
| lewhoo wrote:
| Oh not the "like a human" again. But would you really allow any
| human on every zoom call ? I think this is a good example where
| this analogy breaks pretty obviously.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| It's the best of both worlds because an AI isn't a human - an
| AI learning from your private conversation is like letting a
| cat watch you go to the bathroom.
| musha68k wrote:
| I'm not the biggest slack fan but I won't join any further
| personal zoom meetings going forward; will switch to slack
| "huddles" at the workplace instead.
| pologreen1978 wrote:
| [dead]
| asmor wrote:
| Hollywood should've just gotten actors to use Zoom for a few
| weeks worth of meetings, so they can buy the perpetual likeness
| of their voice and faces.
|
| This is way too broad and especially the sublicense clause is
| going to make me reject meeting requests that contain a Zoom link
| from now on.
| ginko wrote:
| Does that include corporate zoom contracts?
| hyperbovine wrote:
| Regardless, you should complain to your org about this. I'm
| sure it's where all their (Zoom's) revenue comes from. If
| enough of us do it, they will listen.
| Maxious wrote:
| You can self host the enterprise tier "User and meeting
| metadata are managed in the public cloud while the meeting
| traffic including video, audio and data-sharing goes through
| the Meeting Connector in your company network."
| https://explore.zoom.us/docs/en-us/plan/enterprise.html
| bippihippi1 wrote:
| good luck finding the telemetry in the decompiled meeting
| connector server
| jabradoodle wrote:
| Not that hard to packet sniff or add a firewall
| ta1243 wrote:
| Zoom sends encrypted traffic to their servers, for
| "control" purposes. How are you sure it's not leaking
| your company secrets.
|
| There's no way that a legal team will be happy with an
| attempted technical block to what is a legal problem.
|
| Simply cancel the zoom contract. It's not like there
| aren't alternatives.
|
| If this applies to corporate accounts then it's time to
| short Zoom like there's no tomorrow.
| tikkun wrote:
| I've posted an Ask HN thread about which other companies are
| doing this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37022000
| ta1243 wrote:
| "I am altering the deal. Pray I do not alter it any further."
|
| My company pays for zoom, presumably we agreed to some form of
| terms before this change. Is this the same TOS for paid accounts
| too?
| rany_ wrote:
| I think so, given that it mentions the case of the client being
| a paying customer:
|
| > 31.3 Data Processing Addendum. If you are a business,
| enterprise, or education account owner and your use of the
| Services requires Zoom to process an End User's personal data
| under a data processing agreement, Zoom will process such
| personal data subject to Zoom's Global Data Processing
| Addendum.
|
| Though it limits the scope of the data collection:
| https://explore.zoom.us/docs/doc/Zoom_GLOBAL_DPA.pdf
| unnouinceput wrote:
| That's a question for you company's legal department, not HN
| dylan604 wrote:
| Wouldn't it be easier to just have a banner "all your meetings
| are belong to us"?
| an1sotropy wrote:
| For great productivity
| buildbuildbuild wrote:
| How to enable end to end encryption in Zoom:
| https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/360048660871-End-t...
|
| (Presuming of course that their closed source software really E2E
| encrypts without a backdoor)
| gumballindie wrote:
| Why not simply use a product that doesnt steal your meeting
| content?
| Jerrrry wrote:
| [flagged]
| seneca wrote:
| > Why not simply not comment?
|
| Please don't post attacks like this here.
| Jerrrry wrote:
| It was a question, similar to the exact tort posted.
|
| Please don't post self-righteous dismissive comments
| here.
| mrd3v0 wrote:
| I am sorry but it is not "self-righteous", it is in the
| guidelines you agree to when you sign up here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| hot_gril wrote:
| Cause Zoom works well for a lot of people, or you have no
| choice in the matter.
| eddieroger wrote:
| Remote work has enough threats with return to office looming that
| we really don't need Zoom to also be the bad guys now, again,
| since it was hard enough getting them in the door the first time.
| aiisjustanif wrote:
| Zoom is still used without remote work. Businesses talk to
| other businesses and talk to other offices that are not in the
| same location. Pretty common for a Fortune 500 to have more
| than one office location.
| ohdannyboy wrote:
| Zoom is the standard tool I've seen therapists use. I wonder if
| they use a hippa compliant vl variant.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Zoom definitely sells that.
| garydgregory wrote:
| Switch to Jitsi...
| jxf wrote:
| edit: I'm retracting my earlier comment. Earlier I wrote that the
| headline didn't seem to match what was in the TOS, since OP never
| mentioned which part they're concerned about.
|
| I'm now assuming the part they don't like is SS10.4(ii):
|
| > 10.4 Customer License Grant. You agree to grant and hereby
| grant Zoom a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free,
| sublicensable, and transferable license and all other rights
| required or necessary to redistribute, publish, import, access,
| use, store, transmit, review, disclose, preserve, extract,
| modify, reproduce, share, use, display, copy, distribute,
| translate, transcribe, create derivative works, and process
| Customer Content and to perform all acts with respect to the
| Customer Content: [...] _(ii) for the purpose of product and
| service development, marketing, analytics, quality assurance,
| machine learning, artificial intelligence, training, testing,
| improvement of the Services, Software, or Zoom's other products,
| services, and software, or any combination thereof_
|
| Notice that 10.4(ii) says they can use Customer Content "for ...
| machine learning, artificial intelligence, training", which is
| certainly allowing training on user content.
| jsnell wrote:
| But it _is_ saying that your customer content may be used for
| training AI, in 10.4:
|
| > 10.4 Customer License Grant. You agree to grant and hereby
| grant Zoom a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free,
| sublicensable, and transferable license and all other rights
| required or necessary to redistribute, publish, import, access,
| use, store, transmit, review, disclose, preserve, extract,
| modify, reproduce, share, use, display, copy, distribute,
| translate, transcribe, create derivative works, and process
| _Customer Content_ and to perform all acts with respect to the
| Customer Content: (i) as may be necessary for Zoom to provide
| the Services to you, including to support the Services; (ii)
| for the purpose of product and service development, marketing,
| analytics, quality assurance, _machine learning, artificial
| intelligence_ , [...]
| j45 wrote:
| Wow. I hope the op just didn't read that far.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| hitting "search" in your browser and typing "artificial
| intelligence" doesn't really require reading the whole
| thing ;)
| j45 wrote:
| Seemed odd that there was so much details refuting it on
| the points prior to 10.4
|
| Maybe its just a coincidence.
|
| Or maybe it's two angles perfectly coinciding.
| jxf wrote:
| You're right. I retracted the comment and edited to reflect
| this point.
| kortex wrote:
| > You agree to grant and hereby grant
|
| I get that legalese is like human-interpretable pseudocode,
| but like, is there really no better way to word this? How can
| you grant without agreeing to grant?
|
| > import, access, use, store, transmit, review, disclose,
| preserve, extract, modify, reproduce, share, use, display,
| copy, distribute, translate, transcribe, create derivative
| works
|
| Wow this cover of Daft Punk - Technologic sucks.
|
| I, for one, do not welcome our dystopian overlords, but am at
| a loss to what I can do about it. I try to use Jitsi or
| anything not-zoom whenever possible, but it's rarely my pick.
| angled wrote:
| To whom at Zoom do we send the eDiscovery (and litigation
| hold) requests? My goodness.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| And after that litany of very specific things, "and to
| perform all acts with respect to the Customer Content."
| Couldn't the whole paragraph just have been that phrase?
| psunavy03 wrote:
| Not a lawyer, but generally when whole paragraphs aren't
| "that phrase" it's because people read loopholes into
| "that phrase."
| kitchi wrote:
| > How can you grant without agreeing to grant?
|
| I think it's more that they're being explicit about the
| logical AND in that sentence. You agree to grant, AND grant
| them the permission.
|
| I think it's a technicality about it being a "user
| agreement" so they probably have to use the word agree for
| certain clauses.
| dctoedt wrote:
| >> _You agree to grant and hereby grant_
|
| "Hereby grant" means the grant is (supposedly)
| _immediately_ effective even for future-arising rights --
| and thus would take precedence (again, supposedly) over an
| agreement to grant the same rights _in the future_. [0]
|
| (In the late oughts, this principle resulted in the biotech
| company Roche Molecular becoming a part-owner of a Stanford
| patent, because a Stanford researcher signed a "visitor
| NDA" with Roche that included present-assignment language,
| whereas the researcher's previous agreement with Stanford
| included only future-assignment language. The Stanford-
| Roche lawsuit on that subject went all the way to the U.S.
| Supreme Court.)
|
| [0] https://toedtclassnotes.site44.com/Notes-on-Contract-
| Draftin...
| mafuy wrote:
| Yes, but the parent commenter noticed that and wondered
| about the other part, the "agree to grant" part. Simply
| "hereby grant" should suffice.
| dctoedt wrote:
| > _Simply "hereby grant" should suffice._
|
| Not necessarily -- in some circumstances, the law might
| not recognize a _present-day_ grant of an interest that
| doesn 't exist now but _might_ come into being in the
| future. (Cf. the Rule Against Perpetuities. [1])
|
| The "hereby grants and agrees to grant" language is a
| fallback requirement -- belt and suspenders, if you will.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_against_perpetuities
| rolph wrote:
| set yourself up with a couple of vices [coffee, smokes] and
| have look here, for things you can do:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37022623 [a number of
| links regarding how to play with bots and bork training
| by"malforming" your inputs]
| throwaway2990 wrote:
| > But it doesn't say that Customer Content is being used to
| train AI; it says that Zoom can do whatever it wants with
| Service Generated Data.
|
| Customer recordings are service generated content.
| j45 wrote:
| Except it's a few steps away from customer input and customer
| content.
|
| Sounds like it can eventually include chats during a call.
|
| Sounds like it can eventually include the files of your meeting
| recordings in its processing, since it is a file. A call
| recording stored to your zoom cloud can be a form of service
| generated data from calls.
|
| And sounds like it include transcripts of live audio could also
| function as service generated data (was the audio clear? Could
| ai convert speech to text?)
|
| The statistics of calls could turn into the wavelengths of the
| audio and video in real time. Gotta keep an eye on the quality
| with AI.
|
| My only question is if this include the paid users?
|
| If so, I had been meaning to move on from Zoom as a paid
| customer and this may have done it.
|
| It's not end to end encryption if Zoom can tap into your files
| on your cloud or computer. Or let you pretend you are providing
| the other party with encryption when they aren't safe.
| Corporate information is valuable to some.
| Animats wrote:
| Notice that "marketing" is in there. Microsoft claims the right
| to listen in on all your Zoom calls and use that data for
| marketing purposes.
| dennyabraham wrote:
| > You agree that Zoom compiles and may compile Service
| Generated Data based on Customer Content and use of the
| Services and Software.
|
| This clause reads like the distinction is less about the
| contents and more about zoom's rights to use any content
| neltnerb wrote:
| Yeah, I saw some people posting screenshots of 10.2 and was
| thinking maybe it was just exaggeration for clicks, but 10.4 is
| horrifying. Customer Content as defined in 10.1:
|
| "10.1 Customer Content. You or your End Users may provide,
| upload, or originate data, content, files, documents, or other
| materials (collectively, "Customer Input") in accessing or
| using the Services or Software, and Zoom may provide, create,
| or make available to you, in its sole discretion or as part of
| the Services, certain derivatives, transcripts, analytics,
| outputs, visual displays, or data sets resulting from the
| Customer Input (together with Customer Input, "Customer
| Content"); provided, however, that no Customer Content
| provided, created, or made available by Zoom results in any
| conveyance, assignment, or other transfer of Zoom's Proprietary
| Rights contained or embodied in the Services, Software, or
| other technology used to provide, create, or make available any
| Customer Content in any way and Zoom retains all Proprietary
| Rights therein. You further acknowledge that any Customer
| Content provided, created, or made available to you by Zoom is
| for your or your End Users' use solely in connection with use
| of the Services, and that you are solely responsible for
| Customer Content."
| neodypsis wrote:
| Yikes, and to think some schools force people to use Zoom...
| proxiful-wash wrote:
| Who in their right mind would use Zoom as a service. My
| employees will never connect to another conference call with a
| third party that uses zoom again, ever.
| hairofadog wrote:
| I appreciate your sentiment but sometimes there's immense
| pressure to use it because it's what everyone else is using,
| and refusing would cause a meeting to be disrupted (or force
| you not to attend).
| neltnerb wrote:
| But sometimes legal has the trump card in terms of
| dictating company policy, and having confidential
| information laundered into the public domain via training
| on "customer content" seems like a very red line.
| pseudotrash wrote:
| And I'm supposed to trust then? The company that recently
| disabled security controls of the OS as a growth hacking
| technique?
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| Good catch jxf! but what is that boundary line between SGD and
| Customer Input/Content? Is it blurry or clearly defined? It
| seems like things like translations or future enhancements
| might fall into that area (it also seems like training AI on
| diags isn't as useful), so this might be expanded in the future
| now that they have that language in place.
| westcort wrote:
| It is defined not at all. Sorry if this is bad for your
| investment decisions, jxf, but this company is not
| trustworthy.
| jxf wrote:
| I don't have any positions in Zoom (although I did have
| some puts last year that I've since closed out).
| Terretta wrote:
| Since this is a legal language discussion, worth noting your
| quoted portion might _not_ say what you said it explicitly
| says:
|
| _> Service Generated Data; Consent to Use. Customer Content
| does not include any telemetry data, product usage data,
| diagnostic data, and similar content or data that Zoom collects
| or generates in connection with your or your End Users' use of
| the Services or Software ("Service Generated Data")._
|
| _Notice that Service Generated Data quite explicitly doesn 't
| include Customer Content._
|
| On the contrary, it says Customer Content doesn't include
| service generated data. So you don't have rights to the
| telemetry or anything else they collect.
|
| It does not say Service Generated Data doesn't include their
| own copies of customer content, which could be a part of "data
| Zoom collects .. in connection with your .. use".
| westcort wrote:
| You will have to excuse me if I don't trust a company that
| kicks off users at the behest of the PRC!
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/11/zoom-admits-to-shutting-do...
|
| Quibbles over the definition of phrases like "Customer Content"
| and "Service Generated Data" are designed to obfuscate meaning
| and confuse readers to think that the headline is wrong. It is
| not wrong. This company does what it wants to, obviously, given
| it's complicity with a regime that is currently engaging in
| genocide.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-22278037.amp
|
| Why do you trust them to generate an AI model of your
| appearance and voice that could be used to destroy your life? I
| don't.
| [deleted]
| throwaway2990 wrote:
| Well it's a Chinese company. So they are beholden to the CCP.
| eh9 wrote:
| Zoom? A company publicly traded on the Nasdaq and funded in
| San Jose, CA?
| [deleted]
| qingcharles wrote:
| Surprised me too...
|
| "The company has previously acknowledged that much of its
| technology development is conducted in China and security
| concerns from governments abound."
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/11/zoom-admits-to-
| shutting-do...
| jrockway wrote:
| The wording of things in the preferences dialog has
| always convinced me that it's not primarily developed in
| the US.
| jxf wrote:
| I'm not rendering an opinion here about the trustworthiness
| of Zoom. I'm simply saying that the plain reading of the TOS
| is the opposite of what the headline on this post claims.
| westcort wrote:
| The definition of phrases like "Customer Content" and
| "Service Generated Data" are unclear. It is disingenuous to
| say that the headline is the "opposite" of what the
| headline suggests.
|
| You really think that the engineers in China are not
| actively working on developing AI models of users without
| using a lot of user content to feed the model? Doubtful.
| Hiding behind ill-defined terms has the fingerprints of an
| Orwellian regime. I think I know which one.
| jamesgill wrote:
| It seems to me that every 'AI' effort I see today utterly depends
| on circumventing or ignoring privacy.
| barbariangrunge wrote:
| And the copyright of individuals
| icco wrote:
| Definitely, but so does every advertising play. While AI
| companies are more egregious, this isn't anything new.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| That seems an intentionally blind take on the matter. That's
| like saying that because you've seen a kid shoplift a pack of
| gum at a gas station, an organized crime outfit stealing
| entire ATMs from every gas station in a 200 mile radius isn't
| anything new.
|
| Scale matters.
| gumballindie wrote:
| Since there's no intelligence in ai stealing people's work is
| the only way to "train" them.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| I like the part where the reason the US keeps allowing it is
| that "if we don't, China will", as if China has access to the
| same flood of data that US FAANG companies and contenders like
| Zoom have access to every second of every day.
|
| Sure, at the government level it has access to the same data as
| everyone else, but that firewall's still there, can't have an
| AI trained on data that might give a more worldly view on
| matters the party doesn't want citizens exposed to. A Chinese
| AI will be pretty useless for western audiences, so best they
| can do is make the hardware.
|
| Which they already do.
| duccinator wrote:
| China might not be as successful as the west(yet) but they
| have their own ecosystem and have alternatives for most tech
| products.
|
| All the tech companies in China are practically under the
| control of the party. China also has a billion+ people, even
| the market is smaller than the west, I think they will
| manage.
|
| Not to mention the difference in privacy laws and a higher
| number of stem grads to throw at the problem.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| So we agree: that was my point. China is not a competitor
| _for western markets_ , meaning the argument that "If we
| don't do it, China will" is fucking ridiculous, as China
| doesn't have access to the data necessary to make things
| that WORK for the western market.
| gumballindie wrote:
| Even china isnt silly enough to record people's conversations
| to "train" ais. Corporate dictatorships have truly overtaken
| communist dictatorships.
| iaw wrote:
| > Even china isnt silly enough to record people's
| conversations to "train" ais.
|
| China has a social credit score with facial recognition on
| their network of security cameras in public settings....
|
| Recording peoples conversations to monitor for undesirable
| terms (likely with AI) is almost a certainty...
| gumballindie wrote:
| Correct, but they are not yet recording in order to
| augment their own citizens.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| ....what? Which century are you living in that China does
| record people's conversations?
| gumballindie wrote:
| Not for ai training though.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Yeah oh absolutely the party will only use data for a
| single purpose, they'll never go "hey all these AI chips
| we're exporting maybe we can-".
|
| oh wait.
| koolala wrote:
| At what point are they actually stealing our souls to train AI?
| Art? Private comments to our loved ones?
| javajosh wrote:
| Not stealing it, copying it. And your loved ones will be glad
| to have a copy after you die. You're welcome!
| williamtrask wrote:
| For a price...
| throwawaycr4zy wrote:
| There is an opt out -- don't use Zoom.
| Pixie_Dust wrote:
| "You agree to grant and hereby grant Zoom a perpetual, worldwide,
| non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable, and transferable
| license and all other rights required or necessary to
| redistribute, publish, import, access, use, store, transmit,
| review, disclose, preserve, extract, modify, reproduce, share,
| use, display, copy, distribute, translate, transcribe, create
| derivative works, and process Customer Content and to perform all
| acts with respect to the Customer Content:
|
| (i) as may be necessary for Zoom to provide the Services to you,
| including to support the Services;
|
| (ii) for the purpose of product and service development,
| marketing, analytics, quality assurance, machine learning,
| artificial intelligence ..
|
| .. If you have any Proprietary Rights in or to Service Generated
| Data or Aggregated Anonymous Data, you hereby grant Zoom a
| perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free,
| sublicensable, and transferable license and all other rights .."
| gorbachev wrote:
| What's the exact change? What did the relevant section(s) contain
| before?
| the_lego wrote:
| What user content does Zoom the company have access to?
| Connection metadata, call video, call audio..?
| isodev wrote:
| Also, any messages, files and contacts you share via their
| service.
| eh9 wrote:
| I do therapy and group therapy on Zoom, are they going to train a
| therapist AI? Does this go around HIPAA privacy rules? Would they
| keep a file on phi?
| hammock wrote:
| The ToS clearly says all "Customer Content/Customer Input" AKA
| your words, text, voice, face, etc can be used for "Product and
| Services Development" which could as easily be a facial
| recognition database, an FBI-style database of dirt on
| individuals, or literally anything else before it's an AI.
| glitcher wrote:
| ToS can't negate HIPAA or any other laws that could
| potentially be violated though.
| whiddershins wrote:
| HIPAA allows you to waive your privacy rights ... not sure
| whether a TOS would count.
| [deleted]
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| Given how many large companies outright _ban_ using AI for
| codegen etc (including Google!), will this cause some of those
| large companies to find alternatives to Zoom, or is it just too
| ingrained?
|
| (I remember when WebEx was the default choice for large
| companies, and now that's largely changed, but that was because
| Cisco allowed WebEx to mostly wither on the vine, while Zoom is
| still a great _product_ , if not company.)
|
| What about in govt, US or otherwise? Is Zoom still going to be
| used?
| rolph wrote:
| ZOOM is and always was a tool of espionage, find something else
| or purge your infra.
|
| we dont need a zoom video chat to get things done.
| hef19898 wrote:
| That makes Zoom basically a no-go for any company. IP needs to
| be protected, if your video conference provider can use _all_
| data you share using his platform for AI training, meaning he
| has access to it, he is most likely out.
|
| Microsoft says thank you.
| indus wrote:
| I think we needed a user specific robots.txt
|
| - here's my website, take whatever you want
|
| - here's my photo repository, attribute me
|
| - here's my zoom, anonymize me
| [deleted]
| rolph wrote:
| The Dawn of A.I. Mischief Models
|
| https://slate.com/technology/2022/08/4chan-ai-open-source-tr...
|
| Adversarial machine learning explained: How attackers disrupt AI
| and ML systems
|
| https://www.csoonline.com/article/573031/adversarial-machine...
|
| How to attack Machine Learning ( Evasion, Poisoning, Inference,
| Trojans, Backdoors)
|
| https://towardsdatascience.com/how-to-attack-machine-learnin...
|
| AI Security and Adversarial Machine Learning 101
|
| https://towardsdatascience.com/ai-and-ml-security-101-6af802...
|
| The Road to Secure and Trusted AI
|
| https://adversa.ai/report-secure-and-trusted-ai/
| ANarrativeApe wrote:
| This would appear to be a material change to the terms and
| conditions. What recourse do paying subscribers have in terms on
| cancellation and refunds?
| I_am_tiberius wrote:
| I just recently got a response from chatGPT that made me
| speechless. I have a very specific function in my code, with a
| very specific name. Just some days ago I asked it to produce a
| function with similar functionality. It used that function's
| name. I couldn't believe it. I even have disabled chat history &
| training so I'm not sure if that was an incredibly big
| coincidence or they really re-used my data.
| lopatin wrote:
| Does GMail do this for spam detection? I always thought they do
| but didn't read the TOS.
| pavlov wrote:
| Google also used to read email contents for targeted
| advertising. This was a major point of contention when Gmail
| was introduced in 2004. They stopped 13 years later:
|
| https://www.fastcompany.com/4041720/heres-why-it-took-gmail-...
|
| Most people just don't care though.
| ant6n wrote:
| So uh, we'll switch to MS Teams?
| traceroute66 wrote:
| I assume this only applies to their standard service and not when
| you activate the E2E encryption option ?
| NullPrefix wrote:
| we have a comedian here
| beebeepka wrote:
| I guess I am just too cynical because I have zero doubt
| everything is transcribed, analyzed, and stored for later use.
| Why wouldn't they do it? There are massive monetary incentives to
| do so.
|
| I don't think it's just apps. Telecoms have collected incredible
| amount of data and have been using it. Yes, even in the EU where
| things are supposedly better in this regard.
| chriscappuccio wrote:
| PRC instructing a Zoom employee to place child pornography on
| Chinese dissidents should have been enough to stop companies from
| using Zoom https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/china-based-executive-
| us-tele...
| johndhi wrote:
| Curious for users here: why does using your content to train AI
| bother you? How is it any more scary than using it to advertise
| to you for example.
| ggoo wrote:
| IMO, it's less about AI and more the complete lack of any
| regard for user privacy.
| IsTom wrote:
| All and any personal information that is used for training
| might get reproduced later. I am not excited about somebody
| else asking AI personal questions about me.
| danielvaughn wrote:
| Between this and their decision to enforce a return-to-office
| policy, I think it's safe to say that Zoom is making some
| questionable executive decisions.
|
| No company in their right mind is going to be okay with having
| their business meetings recorded and loaded into an AI model.
| gruez wrote:
| The charitable interpretation of this is that they're launching
| some sort of AI product (eg. meeting summarizer) that's opt in,
| but the legal department went too board with their ToS wording.
| e40 wrote:
| Honest question: are the Google and microsoft tos any better?
| Mainly curious about Google, since that is what I would use as an
| alternative.
| galleywest200 wrote:
| One of my doctors uses Zoom for tele-health appointments... How
| is this not a violation of HIPAA?
| WhereIsTheTruth wrote:
| If Microsoft is allowed to do it, why can't Zoom?
|
| https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2022/06/1...
| icco wrote:
| I am not a lawyer, but https://explore.zoom.us/docs/doc/Zoom-
| hipaa.pdf reads like as long as they don't disclose your
| information, they aren't in violation.
| ratg13 wrote:
| If they generate an AI model based on your data and allow
| anyone else to use that model, you should assume that the
| user will also be able to query data about you.
|
| So really it all hinges on if the AI is only used in house,
| or if it is accessible by the general public.
| _throwaway123 wrote:
| [dead]
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| Perhaps slightly off-topic: the U.S. Department of Health and
| Human Services (HHS) seem to be paying particular attention to
| security/privacy as it relates to providers of medical services
| using online tracking services. In a recent open letter they
| mentioned Meta/Facebook and Google Analytics by name. I imagine
| communication services like Zoom are also on their minds.
|
| * https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-
| releases/2023/07/...
|
| * https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2023/07/ftc-
| hhs-j...
| version_five wrote:
| To be fair, there's no way Microsoft isn't doing something worse
| with data from Teams. And the only reason google "products" exist
| is to mine data to sell ads. I can see how we'd expect better
| from a company focused on video chat, but it's not like any of
| their big competitors are actually treating your data
| respectfully.
| CreRecombinase wrote:
| That's absolutely not true about Microsoft. They're very clear
| about how they use your data. If they're mining data in secret
| against their own terms that's felonious criminal behavior.
| version_five wrote:
| > They're very clear about how they use your data
|
| You lost me there. Every day there seem to be new terms in
| new places about what they do. I have absolutely no idea if
| I've managed to find and turn off all the spying that they
| want to do, and even if I have I assume they still have terms
| that let them do what they want that they've opted me in to.
| I_am_tiberius wrote:
| I remember when their server visited urls people posted in
| skype conversations. That was creepy as well.
| pawelwentpawel wrote:
| Does this mean that ZOOM is basically using every attendee's
| audio and video stream to train their models? How do they define
| the "Service Generated Data"?
|
| I made a video-conferencing app for virtual events
| (https://flat.social). No audio and video is ever recorded,
| packets are only forwarded to subscribed clients. Frankly, while
| designing the service it didn't even cross my mind to use this
| data for anything else than the online event itself.
| rolph wrote:
| this means that ZOOM is basically using every attendee's audio
| and video stream[.]
|
| AI training is small potatoes, compared to the espionage
| infrastructure, that has been allowed to take root
| nologic01 wrote:
| The conventional (actually drivel) explanation is that
| individuals don't care about their online footprint because:
| convenience, free, nothing to hide etc.
|
| But how to explain that _corporates_ don 't care? Any value
| extracted from their casual attitude toward online information
| flows is value that nominally belongs to their shareholders.
| Commercial secrecy is a required fundation for any enterprise.
|
| The whole edifice of current tech business models seems to be
| resting on false pillars.
| abecedarius wrote:
| Why not switch? I've had good experiences with competitors. I
| don't know if they're as nice for mass meetings instead of one-
| to-one or small groups, but at least for the chats I've had,
| there's never been any reason to go to Zoom.
|
| (I care more about spyware, privacy, and user sovereignty than AI
| training.)
| qingcharles wrote:
| There are situations where it is impossible to switch. For
| instance, practically all courts use Zoom for remote hearings.
| When I was in jail Zoom was used for remote visits.
| abecedarius wrote:
| That's so absurd. Whatever punishment might have been
| merited, it shouldn't include CCP spyware.
| ta1243 wrote:
| Presumably Microsoft does the same with Teams
| e40 wrote:
| Or worse. Skype tos were changed to allow eavesdropping for
| quality control purposes, some time after the purchase.
| lucb1e wrote:
| > I've had good experiences with competitors
|
| That's flipped for me: I've had good experiences with zoom on
| occasion.
|
| The only time we use Zoom is with US customers, so a handful of
| times per year I'd estimate. Before covid, I only ever heard of
| Zoom in the context of laughably bad vulnerabilities; then
| during covid, suddenly it was a new verb used online to mean
| video calls. In a world where there are many established
| players (until 2019-12-31, I had already used: skype/lync,
| jitsi, discord, signal, whatsapp, wire, telegram, hangouts,
| webex, jami/ring, and gotomeeting) are already established
| players, why in the world would anyone ever choose to go with
| specifically the company that we all laughed at? I don't get
| it, and it seems most of our customers (mostly european) either
| hot_gril wrote:
| Zoom is the only thing that's worked reliably in conferences
| for me. Some of those apps work for small calls but aren't
| made for work meetings.
|
| Our university had premium GSuite accounts for every student
| beforehand and STILL moved all its classes onto Zoom in 2020,
| because Meet/Hangouts was (and still is) far behind. Aside
| from lacking some of Zoom's important features and always
| having random issues with joining meetings, it totally hogs
| your CPU to the point of it actually impacting meetings,
| probably cause it uses VP9 which doesn't have hardware accel
| on most machines.
| [deleted]
| jimmaswell wrote:
| I'd take Zoom over Teams any day. Multiple times lately Teams
| has completely crashed trying to view a screen share, and
| viewing a screen share has taken 3 attempts sometimes, or works
| then breaks if I maximize the window and the presenter has to
| stop and start /again/. Zoom never gave me these problems.
| abecedarius wrote:
| I haven't tried the Microsoft thing -- sounds like a pain.
| Elsewhere in these threads there are some recommendations
| that match my experience.
| landgenoot wrote:
| Because "company policies"
| hiepph wrote:
| This. I personally can switch but how do I communicate with
| my other colleagues? It's hard to convey people to move into
| a whole new stack without significant effort.
| abecedarius wrote:
| FWIW it's gone all right with Google Meet as the usual
| suggestion from me -- though as I said, it's been only
| small-group chats. Most of my colleagues have Chrome.
|
| If really necessary for some particular chat I can use
| Zoom's in-browser page, ignoring its ridiculous auto-
| download of the native client. (I didn't even know a page
| could do that, before.)
| westcort wrote:
| Thankfully nothing like this is in Jitsi Meet's TOS:
| https://jitsi.org/meet-jit-si-terms-of-service/
|
| It never ceases to amaze me how companies choose the worst
| software!
| ebiester wrote:
| How does Jitsi handle 500-person+ conference calls these days?
| This is the killer zoom feature - it looks like Jitsi can
| handle up to 500 now. https://jaas.8x8.vc/#/comparison .
|
| That's personally not enough for many remote companies. So if
| we're going to have to have Zoom on our machines anyway (to
| handle an all-company meeting), why not just use it for the
| rest?
| jabradoodle wrote:
| Specifically because of the discussed TOS.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| > 500-person+
|
| that is called broadcast media -- it was actually better
| thirty years ago than it is now. If you want conversation
| then you make a panel, and have a single microphone for the
| rest.
| donalhunt wrote:
| Are 500-person conference calls actually productive? Surely
| the number of speakers in any such meeting will be a small
| percentage of listeners?
| realo wrote:
| Very... Particularly when the CEO announces half of those
| present are sacked...
| stavros wrote:
| So it only needs to support 250 participants, really.
| itissid wrote:
| City wide Town halls where every one can listen in but pre-
| registered people can ask questions are a productive
| usecase for public information. Those buildings can't
| accommodate 500 people.
| j45 wrote:
| For real, theres no 500 person conference calls, just
| mostly a one way broadcast with a stream of questions.
| CorpOverreach wrote:
| It's useful.
|
| It's more of a large-scale broadcast situation. Think of
| large corporate town halls, town council meetings, etc.
| Gasp0de wrote:
| You can just have a conference call with the 5-10
| speakers and use broadcasting software to stream it to
| the audience, why do they need to be in the conference?
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Live Q&A is a nice feature.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Conference for the speakers + unlisted livestream on
| YouTube could handle that, using chat for Q&A.
| yeputons wrote:
| Chat lags for 5-120 seconds depending on livestream
| settings, writing is much slower than speaking, does not
| always convey the question as well as sound, and is close
| to impossible to do on the go.
| namibj wrote:
| They allow substantially less than 5. Tho trying is
| indeed slower for most people.
| ebiester wrote:
| So, then... you're bound by youtube's TOS, you can't
| prevent people from getting in (usually via login), and
| Zoom makes it a nice experience instead of a hack.
|
| Oh, and you can also do sub-rooms with Zoom, which has
| some applications in these types of meetings.
| geysersam wrote:
| They don't actually suggest using YouTube. The point is
| just to illustrate that this is a very common and
| relatively simple concept. There are tons of tools able
| to accomplish this.
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| For the Q&A section that comes at the end, usually.
| hk__2 wrote:
| You don't need to be in the videocall to ask a question;
| you can do it via chat.
| dcow wrote:
| Why setup a separate broadcast when listeners can just
| join the meeting room?
| geysersam wrote:
| Because then you have the option to use less specialized
| software (not Zoom).
| Gasp0de wrote:
| Yes, I know it's more comfortable that way, but if you
| have to decide between giving all your data from all your
| meetings to a random US company and a slight annoyance
| whenever you do conferences with more than 500(!)
| participants, the choice is pretty simple to me.
|
| Giving all the data to zoom probably means also giving it
| to most US law enforcement agencies (should they request
| it), that would be a big no no for me.
| ebiester wrote:
| For the corporate or training use case, this is not a
| problem. If you are worried about US law agencies, you
| shouldn't be using any system that isn't rooted in face
| to face communication for anything sensitive. (And even
| that is suspect with as small as bugged devices are
| today.)
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| Not to mention that until very recently even MS Teams
| sent you to a different product when you wanted to stream
| to 500 people. Even if it's now integrated, it's still a
| different product inside (and e.g. you could for example
| open a new window when you were in a 500 people "meeting"
| at the time when you still could not do so for a regular
| meeting).
| hot_gril wrote:
| Zoom has a mode that basically does this for you, which I
| assume is how they support >500 users.
| barbazoo wrote:
| At some point though why not just collect questions
| beforehand, record the whole thing and let people watch
| it on their own time. At that scale there'll be no
| interactivity during the meeting anyway.
| ebiester wrote:
| You'd be surprised how much chat happens as a side
| channel. Further, collecting questions means that the
| presentation material would have to be out there first,
| and that misses the point of the town halls, where
| financials and other initiatives are often first
| presented to the larger organization.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Out town halls usually ask for questions beforehand and
| that works quite well.
| max51 wrote:
| Because that's how you end up with projects that take 3
| years to plan instead of 3 months. A live Q&A where all
| of the experts who can answer questions and everyone
| interested in the subject who may have questions are in
| the same room (live or virtual) is a lot more productive
| compared to what you are suggesting.
|
| If something they said in the main presentation was
| missing important details that you need to do you work,
| why do you need to wait days/weeks for them to gather all
| the questions, find all the answers, and publish a video,
| when they could just answer it live in a few seconds?!
| brightlancer wrote:
| Having 500+ people on a project is how something takes 3
| years to plan.
|
| "At that scale there'll be no interactivity during the
| meeting anyway."
| bitcharmer wrote:
| Come on, 500+ calls are a very niche use case. With plenty of
| alternatives at that
| arun-mani-j wrote:
| +1 for Jitsi. They are awesome, lightweight, and just work with
| the least hassle.
|
| Pretty bad that many nontechnical users are not aware of it
| compared to Google Meet or Teams.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| It's also much more responsive than teams. They seem to
| optimize frame rate over resolution and teams seems to do the
| opposite.
|
| Having used both I find the framerate more important as it's
| much easier to interpret quick facial expressions. But teams
| looks glossier which makes it easier to sell I guess.
| Tokumei-no-hito wrote:
| Have you experienced anything like this other commenter
| mentioned?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37022878
| justinsaccount wrote:
| For faces that might be true. I've had issues with
| different tools when sharing a full desktop session on a 4k
| monitor.
| chii wrote:
| This is just a marketing problem aint it?
|
| Unfortunately, one big marketing resource is also owned by
| said competitor...opps. So where are those antitrust laws
| again?
| Knee_Pain wrote:
| lightweight? they are literally the only video chatting
| service I use that makes my laptop fans spin up.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| I tried it at the beginning of the pandemic and my siblings
| phones all drained during the hour long call.
| beebeepka wrote:
| I am yet to find a modern video chat that isn't draining
| the battery of any laptop. From old Xeons, to fairly recent
| Ryzen and even M1/2 Macs.
|
| It's a bit puzzling, actually. I don't think Skype and
| TeamSpeak had the same effect on computers back in the day.
| Just how much local processing are they doing these days?
| It's crazy
| hot_gril wrote:
| Zoom is reasonably light and uses hardware acceleration
| on anything modern (e.g. my 2015 MBP).
| vorticalbox wrote:
| It's most likely due to the fact they are all electron
| apps rather than they are doing "something".
| qwytw wrote:
| > electron apps
|
| Which only adds limited overhead to certain cases. Unless
| they are encoding/decoding video directly in JS...
| Sunspark wrote:
| Hardware decoding is also an issue.. as in, not being
| used. Old webcams used to do h.264 encoding in hardware.
| Encoding has since now moved to the CPU which may or may
| not be fine.. the next issue becomes the codec chosen..
| most stuff all has h.264 decoding in hardware.. but it's
| not being used anymore.. instead they're trying to use
| vp09 or h.265 or av1 which in many cases requires CPU-
| based software encoding and decoding.. so the fans rev up
| like turbines.
|
| I feel certain the reason this is happening is because
| some middle-manager terrorist in a boardroom said "use
| this codec it won't require as much network data usage!
| value for the shareholder!" without asking first whether
| hardware encoding is beneficial even if there's a bit
| more network traffic with the older codecs.
|
| Really burns me up. I do not want to use software
| encoding/decoding if I have hardware support.
| hot_gril wrote:
| I think Google Meet uses VP9, which is really annoying.
| catlover76 wrote:
| A lot of us technical users have never heard of it either lol
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| Zoom noise canceling is really good, it can filter my children
| screaming in the background. Very useful for WFH people
| jonas21 wrote:
| Section 4 of the Jitsi Meet ToS grants them similar rights.
| It's just with mushier language.
|
| > _You give 8x8 (and those we work with) a worldwide license to
| use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative
| works..., communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly
| display, and distribute such content solely for the limited
| purpose of operating and enabling the Service to work as
| intended for You and for no other purposes._
|
| IANAL, but it seems like that would include training on your
| data as long as the model was used as part of their service.
|
| Everyone who operates a video conferencing service will have
| some sort of clause like this in their ToS. Zoom is being more
| explicit, which is generally a good thing. If Jitsi wanted to
| be equally explicit, they could add something clarifying that
| this does _not_ include training AI models.
| r2b2 wrote:
| Jitsi App Privacy:
|
| - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/jitsi-meet/id1165103905
|
| And Zoom:
|
| - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id546505307
|
| Looks like one company likes to gobble data more than the
| other even if both privacy policies are gobble-open.
| rapnie wrote:
| Self-hosting Jitsi is the better option. Or BigBlueButton,
| and there are more self-hosted open-source Zoom alternatives.
| samspenc wrote:
| Do you happen to know of others by any chance. For self-
| hosted video call solutions, looks like Jitsi and
| BigBlueButton (BBB) are the only decent options out there.
| jfkimmes wrote:
| There's now also https://github.com/vector-im/element-
| call.
|
| They have SFU support as of recently, so it should scale
| similarly to Jitsi et al.
| esbeeb wrote:
| QOS (Quality-of-Service) rules might starve your traffic
| of bandwidth. Are you sure you have perfect "Net
| Neutrality" on your side?
|
| You would be well advised to use services where the
| traffic travels through https on port 443 on the server
| (because it's been my experience that it tends to get
| pretty good QOS favorability). My own little rule of
| thumb: "you can connect to any port you want, so long as
| it's port 443 https." ;)
| nemoniac wrote:
| Wait, what is "the service" here?
|
| As I understand it, it refers to using meet.jitsi.si, not
| "another service" someone might provide by downloading the
| Jitsi software and running it on their own server.
|
| Please correct me if I'm wrong since this would give me cause
| to reconsider running a Jitsi server.
| unnah wrote:
| It's "the Service" with capital S, indicating that it is a
| term specifically defined in the contract. Here "the
| Service" is defined as "the meet.jit.si service, including
| related software applications". If that's not vague enough,
| article 2 gives 8x8 the right to change, modify, etc. the
| Service at any time without any notice.
|
| The guys at 8x8 may be well intentioned, but their lawyers
| have done their best to not give the customer any basis to
| sue the company in any foreseeable circumstances. That is
| what company lawyers do, for better or worse.
|
| Regardless, it appears that at present time jitsi is not
| including AI training in their service, and there is no
| explicit carve-out in their terms for AI training. However,
| by article 2 they do have the right to store user content,
| which might become a problem in the future.
| gnicholas wrote:
| > _solely for the limited purpose of operating and enabling
| the Service to work as intended for You and for no other
| purposes._
|
| To me (a former corporate lawyer) the "for You" qualifier
| would limit their ability to use content to train an AI for
| use by anyone other than "You". Is there an argument? Yes.
| But by that argument, they would also be allowed to "publicly
| perform" my videoconf calls for some flimsy reasons that
| don't directly benefit me.
| johndhi wrote:
| I write these policies for my day job and I agree with
| this.
| oblio wrote:
| > I write these policies for my day job
|
| My regrets :-p
| zeusk wrote:
| it isn't for you solely/exclusively. If it "improves" the
| service for everyone - that includes "you".
| gnicholas wrote:
| Yep, I acknowledge that is a possibility, but it would
| also lead to them having permission to display literally
| the entirety of my videonconf calls to anyone, for
| advertising purposes or some other purpose that only
| incidentally benefits me. That would be a strained
| reading IMO.
| turbojerry wrote:
| To misquote Bill Clinton, it depends on what the means of
| 'you' is.
| benatkin wrote:
| More like a certainty :)
| [deleted]
| Guvante wrote:
| Additionally courts consider the fact that users have
| little if any say in the terms and thus tend to take the
| most restrictive but still reasonable view of any
| uncertainty in the terms.
|
| Basically "if you wanted it you could have asked for it,
| if you didn't then that is a problem".
| gnicholas wrote:
| Yep, contracts of adhesion, and construing against the
| drafter: both favor the user here.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Also jitsi can easily be self hosted which means no information
| will leak altogether.
|
| I've refused to install zoom since they installed a Mac
| backdoor and refused to remove it until Apple took a stand and
| marked them as malware until they removed it. And that was far
| from their only skullduggery.
| j45 wrote:
| Jitsi is at least reasonably self hostable, minus the inability
| to have users to login without some effort.
| mbesto wrote:
| > how companies choose the worst software!
|
| A local accounting firm with 4 employees just wants their
| conferencing software to work - Zoom does that better than
| anyone else.
|
| There is nothing "worst" about that. In never ceases to amaze
| me that this community is so out of touch with the general
| populace.
| rst wrote:
| What I take to be the TOS for Google Meet (it's a little hard
| to tell!) makes no specific reference to AI, but does mention
| use of customer data for "developing new technologies and
| services" more generally.
| https://policies.google.com/terms#toc-permission
| tikkun wrote:
| Also HN user jeltz below mentioned:
|
| > I have tried most of them: Google Meet, Teams, Slack,
| Discord, Skype, Jitsi and so far I liked Jitsi the most and
| Skype the least.
| realusername wrote:
| Skype became really really terrible, it looks like it's been
| unmaintained during the past 10 years, I'd rate its usability
| worse than most open-source software. The sound quality is
| also awful, it feels like I'm calling a landline.
| gumby wrote:
| Where do you live? In the US at least, landline (AKA POTS)
| is still the gold standard for audio quality.
| tikkun wrote:
| Not parent commenter, though facetime audio or telegram
| audio is my preferred for audio quality.
| NavinF wrote:
| In the US I don't know a single person that has access to
| POTS. Discord (with paid nitro) is the gold standard for
| quality and latency, followed by all the free VoIP apps
| efreak wrote:
| I live in the US, and I'm pretty sure everyone I know has
| a landline, though a good number of them are now
| digital/fiber/whatever. Some people I know still have
| multiple landlines, as it's cheaper than paying multiple
| cell bills if necessary. I know at least one person who
| used to have call forwarding set up to get calls on their
| cellphone, but with the current state of marketing calls
| they probably don't do that anymore.
| realusername wrote:
| I live in France, landline had a distinct background
| white noise to it that somehow Skype managed to imitate.
| Switching to any other software feels like you're
| upgrading to HD audio.
| MandieD wrote:
| It's called "comfort noise," and was an option in
| Lync/Skype for Business. A lot of users being switched
| from desk phones, especially older ones who still
| primarily used landlines at home, found themselves
| wondering if their conversation partner was still on the
| line without it.
| eddieroger wrote:
| Worst is relative. Zoom has the lower barrier to entry for
| normal users (who far outnumber us nerdy type) than any other
| app in it's class. Worst for privacy, best for usability, many
| argue.
| api wrote:
| Worst for privacy best for usability is the norm. Most B2C
| stuff is almost predatory. The only exceptions are at the
| high (cost) end of the market, and Apple to some extent.
|
| If you aren't paying in either time (DIY) or money, you are
| probably being exploited.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| Apple is also the high cost end of the market.
| mycall wrote:
| Not yet.
| PeterisP wrote:
| For various reasons I have a bunch of different groups where I
| use different videocall software for regular meetings - Zoom,
| Jitsi, Teams, Skype, Google Meet and Webex.
|
| Out of all those, Jitsi is the only one where I can't rely on
| the core functionality - video calls and screensharing for
| small meetings (5-6 people); I have had multiple cases when
| we've had to switch to something else because the video/audio
| quality simply wasn't sufficient, but a different tool worked
| just fine for the same people/computers/network.
|
| Like, I fully understand the benefits of having a solution
| that's self-hosted and controlled, so we do keep using self-
| hosted Jitsi in some cases for all these reasons, but for
| whatever reason the core functionality performs significantly
| worse than the competitors. Like, I hate MS Teams due to all
| kinds of flaws it has, but when I am on a Teams meeting with
| many others, at least I don't have to worry if they will be
| able to hear me and see the data I'm showing.
| nicoco wrote:
| Bigger servers?
| bob-09 wrote:
| Not sure there would be a decent enough return on
| investment, especially if the other tools they regularly
| use provide more reliable service at no additional cost.
| boredumb wrote:
| I started using matrix internally (with element as a client)
| which uses jitsi under the hood for video/voice chat. Quality
| is amazing.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Not anymore actually. The jitsi integration was just a
| temporary thing but 1:1 video chat already works natively.
| mrd3v0 wrote:
| Element Call is going to be pretty great once it is
| production-ready and has E2EE enabled by default (a branch of
| it already has it on.)
| xbruteforce wrote:
| We've been using self-hosted matrix for the past 3 years with
| our jitsi instance and I tend to agree with you.
|
| It's reliable and privacy preserving.
| tradevapp wrote:
| I use Zoom for work and never got an email explaining that
| suddenly they can use call recordings to train some AI models
| and sell this to 3rd parties.
| arielcostas wrote:
| Actually, they only affect their hosted meet.jit.si service,
| right? Not if you self-host Jitsi on your own server (which you
| should if you're a medium-large company, for data protection
| and all that)
| lucb1e wrote:
| Of course. If you run it yourself, you're free to train your
| neural nets on your users, if that's something you want to do
|
| For restrictions on what you can do with the code, you'll
| need to check the code's license, not the hosted-service's
| terms of use
| DrZootron wrote:
| Great, what could possibly go wro..
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37013704
| rsync wrote:
| Do the terms of service require that my content be _truthful_ or
| even reflective of reality in any way ?
|
| Do the terms of service disallow machine generated content ?
|
| How soon until this becomes an arms race between zoom and those
| that would attempt to poison zoom ?
|
| (Asking for a friend...)
| amelius wrote:
| At this point I feel that EULAs should contain clear warning
| signs.
| amelius wrote:
| Will this fly in the EU?
| isodev wrote:
| 10.2 ... You agree that Zoom compiles and may compile Service
| Generated Data based on Customer Content and use of the Services
| and Software. You consent to Zoom's access, use, collection,
| creation, modification, distribution, processing, sharing,
| maintenance, and storage of Service Generated Data for any
| purpose, to the extent and in the manner permitted under
| applicable Law, including for the purpose of product and service
| development, marketing, analytics, quality assurance, machine
| learning or artificial intelligence (including for the purposes
| of training and tuning of algorithms and models), training,
| testing, improvement of the Services, Software, or Zoom's other
| products, services, and software, or any combination thereof, and
| as otherwise provided in this Agreement
| sjmulder wrote:
| "..for any purpose", how is this ever supposed to fly in the EU
| or UK? Should be opt-in, not in the small print, and entirely
| optional.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| "...for any purpose, _to the extent and in the manner
| permitted under applicable Law_ "
| jsnell wrote:
| You're both misquoting and misunderstanding. Misquoting in
| that you clipped out the "to the extent and in the manner
| permitted under applicable Law". And misunderstanding since
| the text was talking "service generated data", not about
| "customer data". That's basically data generated by their
| system (e.g. debug logs). It's not the data you entered into
| the system (contact information), the calls you made, the
| chats you sent, etc.
|
| Also, the linked document is effectively a license for the
| intellectual property rights. The data protection side of
| things would be covered by the privacy policy[0]. This all
| seems pretty standard?
|
| [0] https://explore.zoom.us/en/privacy/
| AdieuToLogic wrote:
| > And misunderstanding since the text was talking "service
| generated data", not about "customer data".
|
| Isn't that what section 10.4 covers and ultimately grants
| liberal rights to Zoom?
|
| > 10.4 Customer License Grant. You agree to grant and
| hereby grant Zoom a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive,
| royalty-free, sublicensable, and transferable license and
| all other rights required or necessary to redistribute,
| publish, import, access, use, store, transmit, review,
| disclose, preserve, extract, modify, reproduce, share, use,
| display, copy, distribute, translate, transcribe, create
| derivative works, and process Customer Content and to
| perform all acts with respect to the Customer Content: (i)
| as may be necessary for Zoom to provide the Services to
| you, including to support the Services; (ii) for the
| purpose of product and service development, marketing,
| analytics, quality assurance, machine learning, artificial
| intelligence, ...
| jsnell wrote:
| Yes, but that's not the section that this subthread was
| about, and the objection about "this can't be legal in
| the EU and UK" was based on the text quoted for service
| generated content which is different.
|
| And again, this is about granting an license on the
| intellectual property. It doesn't create any kind of end-
| run around the GDPR, and wouldn't e.g. count as consent
| for GDPR purposes.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Furthermore, as far as I know, the "to the extent and in
| the manner permitted under applicable Law" part is just a
| reminder. Laws always have priority over contracts, and any
| part of a contract that goes against the law can simply be
| ignored.
| sjmulder wrote:
| You're right, I was too quick to judge. Sorry.
| a2128 wrote:
| I don't think they carved themselves out this permission
| for the purpose of training an AI on debug logs. For all we
| know "Zoom compiles Service Generated Data based on
| Customer Content" may include them compiling an mp4 of your
| call. That would seem to fall under the part of the
| definition that says "data that Zoom collects or generates
| in connection with your or your End Users' use of the
| Services or Software"
| asplake wrote:
| Before that:
|
| > Customer Content does not include any telemetry data, product
| usage data, diagnostic data, and similar content or data that
| Zoom collects or generates in connection with your or your End
| Users' use of the Services or Software ("Service Generated
| Data").
|
| I could be wrong, but my take is that there is not all that
| much to see here
| smt88 wrote:
| Zoom is giving itself the right to collect video and audio of
| you that could be used _today_ to deepfake your voice in a
| convincing way.
|
| It won't be long before the video deepfakes are convincing
| too.
|
| This is absolutely awful and terrifying.
| geysersam wrote:
| > does not include ... product usage data, diagnostic data,
| and similar content or data that Zoom collects or generates
| in connection with your ... use of the Services
|
| Did you not read the quote? Or are you telling me this
| still might include video and audio data? I feel like an
| medieval illiterate farmer reading latin...
| smt88 wrote:
| The scope of content used for AI training seems (to me)
| like it _only_ includes video and audio data.
|
| The list you reproduced above sounds like it's just
| metadata, like IP addresses, authentication logs, click
| tracking, etc.
| calibas wrote:
| It's section 10.4 that says they can use "Customer Content"
| for AI training.
| isodev wrote:
| It's hard to understand what they mean. I understand it as
| they're free to generate "Service Generated Data" based on
| "Customer Content". So for example, a compressed rendition of
| a call recording would be "Service Generated Data" and thus
| they will be free to do whatever they want with it (improve
| their caption generation models ... or sell it to someone?).
| j45 wrote:
| A recording of your call can be generated data based on
| their service recording it.
| chrisjj wrote:
| > It's hard to understand what they mean.
|
| Working as designed, surely.
| pteraspidomorph wrote:
| There is also a provision for letting them train AI on
| Customer Content (10.4: machine learning, artificial
| intelligence, training) so the distinction probably doesn't
| matter in this case?
| [deleted]
| AdieuToLogic wrote:
| After that, section 10.4:
|
| > 10.4 Customer License Grant. You agree to grant and hereby
| grant Zoom a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-
| free, sublicensable, and transferable license and all other
| rights required or necessary to redistribute, publish,
| import, access, use, store, transmit, review, disclose,
| preserve, extract, modify, reproduce, share, use, display,
| copy, distribute, translate, transcribe, create derivative
| works, and process Customer Content and to perform all acts
| with respect to the Customer Content: ... (ii) for the
| purpose of product and service development, marketing,
| analytics, quality assurance, machine learning, artificial
| intelligence, ...
|
| I believe this might be the wording the submission
| references.
| duringmath wrote:
| Using user generated data to train an AI is no different than
| scanning it for spam or any other administrative function, and
| using public data to train your AI model is fair use and everyone
| should get over it already.
| Havoc wrote:
| >Using user generated data to train an AI is no different than
| scanning it for spam
|
| That's definitely not true.
|
| Under some circumstances LLMs can spit out large chunks of the
| original content verbatim. Meaning this can actively leak the
| contents of a confidential discussion out into a completely
| different context, a risk that does not exist with spam
| scanning.
| hammock wrote:
| I like how everyone is up in arms over the use of your meetings
| for AI training specifically, when the ToS clearly says all
| "Customer Content/Customer Input" AKA your words, text, voice,
| face, etc can be used for "Product and Services Development"
| which could as easily be a facial recognition database, a
| corporate espionage service, a direct competitor to whatever
| company you work for, or literally anything else before it's an
| AI.
| fieldbob wrote:
| This also probably mean that they are going to tap/secretly
| record every video call and analyze the data without recording
| being turned on. Since all video calls terminate at a zoom server
| they already have the capability to listen in without anyone
| knowing about it.
| Sunspark wrote:
| You want to see a Zoom client that is utter broken trash? Look at
| the Linux flatpak. The scaling is completely broken, buttons are
| covered up, changing the size of the window results in bleed-
| through from underneath in parts but not others. Once a call is
| started if you maximize the window it will cut the other side's
| video in half.
|
| I am not a regular user of Zoom at all but I did install the
| flatpak to check it out. I am not impressed. A company as big as
| this and they couldn't scrape up the resources to find a
| developer to make a working client? PATHETIC!
|
| It looks like it was done as a highschool project by the gifted
| nephew of the CEO for their computer class and then rolled out to
| the world so that all may benefit from the genius of the nephew.
| baz00 wrote:
| Have you tried using a desktop OS that vendors give a crap
| about?
|
| (Yeah I know how that sounds but it's true)
| Sunspark wrote:
| Windows is my main OS. If I have to use Zoom, I will use it
| in the web interface only.. I won't install the app. Reason
| is because I don't trust that the app is not riddled with CCP
| backdoors.
| notpushkin wrote:
| Yeah well thanks, but I'll probably just use a product whose
| vendor gives a crap about Linux.
| r4indeer wrote:
| The Flatpak wrapper for Zoom is not made or endorsed by Zoom,
| Inc. as indicated in its description [1].
|
| I am definitely not a fan of Zoom either and had my own issues
| with the Linux client, but if the problems you describe are
| unique to the Flatpak and not in the official Linux
| distribution, you can't blame Zoom for that.
|
| [1] https://flathub.org/apps/us.zoom.Zoom
| Sunspark wrote:
| How can you say it's unique to the flatpak? The poor window
| management is the fault of the original coder.
|
| It's not like a flatpak packager says "ok let's implement the
| GUI framework from scratch".
|
| So, yes, I can blame Zoom for sure!
|
| If by some chance flatpak packagers need to re-implement all
| the GUI calls manually, then it is a miserable failure as a
| packaging format and needs to be terminated immediately. But
| we know this is not so, right? Nobody would be that stupid as
| to require hand-coding the GUI all over again, right?
| everyone wrote:
| Why did Zoom explode in popularity anyway? When there were
| already plenty of video chat programs on the market that seemed
| to be doing fine?
| user6723 wrote:
| There should be jail time for asking someone to be subject to
| third party surveillance anywhere commercial activity is
| involved.
|
| "Sorry anon, we won't point a web browser at your colocated Jitsi
| instance, please install this malware named Zoom and let a third
| party gather your likeness to deepfake you better". Put these
| cunts in jail.
| nphase wrote:
| I am not a lawyer, but I believe that without consent, this may
| actually be illegal in the state of Illinois.
| tikkun wrote:
| What are the alternatives people have tried and had good
| experiences with?
| sickill wrote:
| I like https://meet.jit.si/ the most.
| jeltz wrote:
| I have tried most of them: Google Meet, Teams, Slack, Discord,
| Skype, Jitsi and so far I liked Jitsi the most and Skype the
| least.
| tikkun wrote:
| That's helpful to know you tried all of those. Based on that
| plus all the other Jitsi mentions in the thread, I'll give
| Jitsi a try.
| jenadine wrote:
| There is also Nextcloud Talk
| cj wrote:
| We use Google Meet at our company for everything including
| external client and vendor calls.
|
| Not to say Google has the best track record with privacy... but
| its feature set is on par with Zoom in most areas
|
| (I personally like it because it's 100% sandboxed in the
| browser)
| randerson wrote:
| Google at least has a better track record with _security_
| than Zoom.
| PeterisP wrote:
| How does it work for larger meetings?
|
| At the start of Covid I had to check many options, and while
| for many use-cases Google Meet was most convenient, it
| started to work poorly if there were a bunch of people
| connected, so I used Google Meet for calls with 2 (or 3)
| people and something else (e.g. Zoom) for anything larger.
| cj wrote:
| I have a group of 20 people I meet with every work day over
| Google Meet. No trouble or complaints.
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