Enlarge (credit: Zoom)
If you’ve waded into Twitter timelines for security and privacy advocates over the past five days, you’ve no doubt seen Zoom excoriated for its plans to enable end-to-end encrypted video conferencing solely for paying customers. Zoom’s millions of non-paying users won’t receive the protection so that the company can monitor meetings for child-abuse activity and other types of illegal and disturbing content, executives said.
“Oh, fuck off, @zoom_us. You don't care about anything except money,” one critic wrote on Twitter Tuesday, five days after Reuters reported the plans. “You certainly don't care about protecting people from the abusive overreach of police. After all, didn't you just say non-paying customers won't benefit from encryption b/c you want to work with law enforcement?”
The move is certainly a departure from some platforms that already offer end-to-end encryption. Signal, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp all offer the protection to all users, though few if any pay for the services. Few video conferencing services offer end-to-end encryption. Like Zoom, its competitors that do offer end-to-end crypto generally do so only for select users.
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