The last time I tried to make video chat work with people, we dived between jitsi, facebook messenger, zoom… until something worked well enough. what are people using here now? Jitsi? Google Meet? Whatsapp? Facebook Messenger? Zoom? Skype? Facetime, somehow? The builtin thing in matrix that used to be jitsi but I think they updated it? Microsoft Teams? What?
Whatever the other person uses. Everyone uses something different and I raarely feel like convincing someone to switch to something new, much less helping them figure out how to do it. Of my circle of friends, it’s least painful for me to just find out what they already use and install it myself.
I usually use Signal.
Signal.
If you have 100 friends online, maybe 2 of them will be using signal. Signal’s adoption rate for normies is ABYSMAL
alright, to spell out the joke: nobody uses signal. I wouldn’t be able to pay my friends to install signal. there’s nobody to chat with.
Signal
This. Slowly but surely everyone around me has migrated to Signal. It’s reliable and avoids all kinds of restrictions while remaining secure and private. Nothing more can be asked of it.
Nothing more can be asked of it.
Arguable, the ability it already had of being able to also receive SMS so you wouldn’t be stuck using two apps to accommodate the non Signal users of your life.
I mean, they could enable automatic cloud backups (and I do mean enable, the solution is built into the system quite neatly and their automatic backups are already well-encrypted so they’re just being ridiculous about security theater instead of letting us have a very important feature). And they could stand to make the cross-device experience (much) better.
but mostly, I wish anybody I knew used it. I’m wondering what kind of circle you’re in where everybody started using signal.
I wish anybody I knew used it.
I was the first person I know to even hear about it. I’ve gotten a few people on it, but it’s a harder sell now that they don’t support SMS. Back when they did, anyone could use it as their main messaging app. Now it can only be used to message other people who have it, and nobody wants to switch to something that they can only use to talk to one person.
so they’re just being ridiculous about security theater instead of letting us have a very important feature)
Have you ever checked the size of the backups, especially the people who never delete things? How many people are throwing money signals way, and do you think more servers and storage would be free for them? That would probably end Signal being free.
Jitsi.
No installs required on any participant. No login required (except for host recently). No time limit or user limit (maybe there is but we use it and have never had any problems). Works awesome.
If something costs nothing then you are the product though. Have you looked into their TOS?
Yes. They’re quite reasonable, especially considering you don’t even need an account. https://tosdr.org/en/service/2201
It’s a Free Software product. They are owned by 8x8 which charges for its video solutions, but Jitsi is absolutely free and Free. https://www.8x8.com/products/plans-and-pricing
you don’t even need an account.
That’s sadly not true anymore for their own hosted service:
https://jitsi.org/blog/authentication-on-meet-jit-si/
tl;dr: you need to login with a Google, Facebook or Github login to create a room
