While Jitsi is open-source, most people use the platform they provide, meet.jit.si, for immediate conference calls. They have now introduced a “Know Your Customer” policy and require at least one of the attendees to log in with a Facebook, Github (Microsoft), or Google account.
One option to avoid this is to self-host, but then you’ll be identifiable via your domain and have to maintain a server.
As a true alternative to Jitsi, there’s jami.net. It is a decentralized conference app, free open-source, and account creation is optional. It’s available for all major platforms (Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android), including on F-Droid.
Those are all SaaS providers with meeting software available. If someone was using Jitsi, it was specifically to not use a login with any of those providers. They’re actively deciding not to continue operation with this. Its like when OnlyFans declares they wouldn’t allow adult content going forward
Its like when OnlyFans declares they wouldn’t allow adult content
So… Tumblr?
OnlyFans announced it too, but walked back on it later.
I laughed pretty hard at OnlyFans trying to remove the only thing that I was aware they hosted.
Yeah but at least Tumblr had a majority of non porn content. Jitsi is almost entirely privacy wonks, and only fans is almost entirely porn
I imagine that, at least, the videos wouldn’t go through those SAAS providers, and that’s relatively a plus still.
Never used Jitsi. Above you indirectly say that from the functional point of view Jitsi is noticeably worse than meeting solutions of MS/Google/FB. Is this really so?
I don’t know how I indirectly said that. I certainly didn’t mean to. Its less well known, perfectly fine, and it’s killer feature for a long time has been being decoupled from privacy disrespecting big tech companies
“If someone was using Jitsi, it was specifically to not use a login with any of those providers” this sounds like the only reason to use jitsi is avoid big guys, and if you cannot avoid them jitsi makes no sense - i.e. “no big guys” is the only feature worth it.
Btw, “login via Google” and use “Google meet” are significantly different cases from privacy point of view.
It’s not the only reason to use jitsi, just that most people wouldn’t bother seeking any alternative if they didn’t care.
“Main motivating factor” != “Only viable reason”
Sorry for any unclarity I introduced. And yes, login via google vs full on google meet are two different things, but if I have to login via google for Jitsi I’m suddenly far more likely to use Jami
My experience has been that Jitsi is much better when the connection is bad. However, its default setting is that video is cropped to be square, which is very bad. I don’t even think that the user can change that.
Those are all SaaS providers with meeting software available.
With paid for commercial meeting software available.
If someone was using Jitsi, it was specifically to not use a login with any of those providers.
Or because they didn’t want to pay ongoing SAAS fees.
They’re actively deciding not to continue operation with this. Its like when OnlyFans declares they wouldn’t allow adult content going forward
It’s literally nothing like that since Onlyfans is not an open source project that lets you host your own instance and run it however you like.
If you want anonymity run it yourself. If you want to use their servers it’s reasonable that they expect to know a modicum about how to verify you are who you say you are. There is literally no other way to prevent abuse other than identity verification of bad actors.
Why is everyone up in arms about this? The abuse of their free service was rampant. This isn’t a core project change, this is just a measure to keep a version of the project up for free without completely taking it down. They don’t even have a way to monetize this. An alternative was to simply shut it down and only allow you to self host it.
I self host my Jitsi instance, but as a privacy nut, I don’t see a problem with this. Absolute privacy cannot always coexist with free anonymous services. Don’t blame Jitsi, blame the people who ruined it for everyone else.
How was their free service abused?
By overusing it, I think.
deleted by creator
In this case, it sure does sound like abuse. Considering the careful wording, combined with the seemingly kneejerk reaction of requiring authentication, there was likely illegal activity going on:
Earlier this year we saw an increase in the number of reports we received about some people using our service in ways that we cannot tolerate. To be more clear, this was not about some people merely saying things that others disliked.
Over the past several months we tried multiple strategies in order to end the violations of our terms of service. However in the end, we determined that requiring authentication was a necessary step to continue operating meet.jit.si.
It was a free, anonymous service that let people stream video and send messages. Consider for a moment if that “video” was actually non-video data encoded to be streamed through Jitsi and sent to another location. Or, consider if the video was video, but was so egregious and illegal, that Jitsi had to take action. It doesn’t take a lot of thinking to consider the kinds of activities could have been going on.
deleted by creator
This is its downfall
Earlier this year we saw an increase in the number of reports we received about some people using our service in ways that we cannot tolerate. To be more clear, this was not about some people merely saying things that others disliked.
Cannot be less clear.
Anyway I don’t understand why you’d need an account. I’ve always created rooms and share the link to people to invite. You can setup a password if you want privacy. Any reason to login?
They are probably talking about using it to share CSAM or other illegal content. They need one person to login to be not anonymous so they can give it to the authorities if necessary.
But why a Google/FB/MS account? Why isn’t an email account from an established provider enough, why centralise to three megacorps?
Because these three provide federated login most email providers do not.
I didn’t think I’d unironically hear “This is an advantage because now one company controls all your logins” as a reply to privacy concerns.
I didn’t say that. Security and privacy are nearly opposites. This is a security decision.
There’s plenty of disposable email services out there.
And they’re added to spam lists all the time. All you need do is draw up a list of the twenty most popular, because frankly Gmail and outlook already cover so many while leaving room for privacy-friendly providers.
There was likely a broad campaign of abuse that violated some sorta law. There’s not really another reason for this move short of something that puts them in an untenable situation.
“One option to avoid this is to self-host, but then you’ll be identifiable via your domain and have to maintain a server.”
Makes it a non issue.
It’s free as in freedom not as in free beer and that’s that.
Jitsi doesn’t have to offer free service and they particularly don’t have to provide anonymity.
The same is true for the fediverse, since the admins have info that could help identify users. That has it’s uses too.
Jitsi remains free. As you can see, this isn’t about money but rather about privacy, which has diminished compared to before.
The issue with centralized systems becomes more apparent: the provders are held accountable for their users’ actions.
@esaru @bmaxv @technology concur that this reduces privacy for users of Jitsi’s hosted service. It also has some concrete benefits for Jitsi - they get to outsource account validation and security. Perhaps they were struggling to contain abuse.
Privacy has not diminished, you can host your own instance of the jitsi software account-free and take on the liability of people using your server for child porn yourself if you want to.
It ded
It’s hypocritical to call your service “privacy friendly” and then require the use of a Google/Facebook/GitHub account to log in. I kinda understand the reason why they do this, but they could have at least allowed you to use a more private email provider.
Calling them hypocritical is hysterical when they offer all the source code for free and you can host your own instance that doesn’t need an account.
The software is free open source. But this case is not about the software. It’s about the web instance that the majority of the people was using. And that instance now lost its privacy feature and shouldn’t call itself privacy friendly anymore.
What information is transmitted to GitHub when you sign in with your GitHub account?
I’ll tell you: that you signed into jitsi.
That’s it.
I agree with you and it’s an important distinction. But for me it’s also about the ethos of the developers or company. Promoting free and open source tools is great, but requiring the opposite as a prerequisite to use the largest publicly facing implementation of that is a very odd decision.
Is there another OAuth identity provider they should use? I agree that it’s ludicrous that advertising companies are the primary identity providers we use, but I have no issue with GitHub / Microsoft as an identity provider.
At the end of the day they could create their own account system and take on the liability of storing passwords, but why? That’s not what their software is about and as instance admins it will take away their time and focus.
At the end of the day I think what you’re chafing against is not their fault but a fundamental problem with open source software at the moment, we have no system of decentralized identity verification, and identity verification is basically a necessary part of ensuring your system isn’t abused.
I’d personally prefer they didn’t implement any KYC-style identity verification at all in the first place, but it’s not my service or project and I’m not a paying customer, so my preference is largely irrelevant to them. But that said, I didn’t intend the comment to be damning, or even a particularly harsh criticism, just thought it wad an odd choice.
If what you are saying is accurate, and there aren’t better options, I at least understand that choice a bit more. If they feel they need an identity provider for whatever reason, they should obviously choose the one they feel best fits that need. And as others have noted, different servers and instances can be spun up or utilized. Users can choose to utlize whichever fits their needs best, or none if none of them fit.
Your other point is well taken though that it may be a gap in the marketplace. Sounds to me like a need waiting to be filled. I recall reading about some decentralized blockchain solutions for this sometime back, but do not recall the specifics. I haven’t followed along because it didn’t seem relevant to my personal or business needs at the time.
If anyone else knows of alternative options that may be better or more privacy friendly, I’d certainly be interested to hear about them. And would chip in funding for any good FOSS projects that might seek to solve this problem.
Good thing that you can still self host it, post your favorite jitsi instances below for everyone to use.
I’ll start with this one: https://calls.disroot.org/
Thanks for that link. I didn’t know disroot hosted Jitsi.
For others in this thread, here’s a list of Jitsi instances: https://jitsi.github.io/handbook/docs/community/community-instances/
That said, it is completely understandable that some users may feel uncomfortable using an account to access the service. For such cases we strongly recommend hosting your own deployment of Jitsi Meet. We spend a lot of effort to keep that a very simple process and this has always been the mode of use that gives people the highest degree of privacy.
Seems like you can avoid it by self-hosting. Still a very suspicious move, kinda defeats the whole point of an alternative to big tech conference services.
Google, GitHub and Facebook for starters but may modify the list later on
Maybe they could support some auth provider from some fediverse app? That would be kinda neat.
Wasn’t easier to just shutdown the server?
I use jitsi just because doesn’t have Facebook/Google/Microsoft login
Wonder why email as an identifier wasn’t sufficient…
This is indeed sad news. I made my friends (who don’t care about free software) switch from google meet to jitsi for video calls just the other month.
The only thing that got them sold on jitsi was that it required no login.
deleted by creator
ITT: People not understanding the difference between a free publicly hosted instance and the OSS tool itself.
This is about the free publicly hosted instance, used by the majority of the Jitsi users, who used it because they didn’t have to login with a Google/Facebook/Github account. Which they now have to.
I really hope this doesn’t become a trend, but every time I see a few buttons for signup with email coming last I have to wonder.
Oh hell no. Why they dont make it optional?
RIP
