New York City bans Zoom in schools, citing security concerns

As the previous discussion already noted it seems disingenuous.<p>Spacex has real security concerns with national security secrets and trade assets.<p>Schools primary goal should be accessibility when it comes to teaching and Zoom arguably with its better video&#x2F;audio has the best even with glaring security flaws (that do not necessarily seem decidedly worse than Hangouts).<p>Banning Zoom seems to be getting on the negative news train and applying the old adage, &quot;everything looks like a nail.&quot;

&quot;I bet Microsoft is behind this&quot; I thought, and sure enough - found the obligatory Teams push in there.

Previous discussion: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=22782302" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=22782302</a>

I recently discovered there&#x27;s a Chrome app:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;chrome.google.com&#x2F;webstore&#x2F;detail&#x2F;zoom&#x2F;hmbjbjdpkobdjplfobhljndfdfdipjhg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;chrome.google.com&#x2F;webstore&#x2F;detail&#x2F;zoom&#x2F;hmbjbjdpkobdj...</a><p>Gives you most of the featureset of the Mac app (unlike Zoom&#x27;s crappy web app), but has a much narrower permission set which should mitigate most abuse.

After trying out a few solutions, I found <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bigbluebutton.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bigbluebutton.org&#x2F;</a> by far the best for classroom settings or even for general meetings. Being able to upload a presentation as a collaborative white board is much better than simple screen sharing (which is also possible). Video quality is not the best, but audio is rock solid and we had zero connection problems with tens of people in a conference. Getting started is simpler than Zoom, since no installation is required and both Firefox and Chrome are fully supported. It is also pretty easy to self-host and there is even a load balancer for large installations: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;ICTO&#x2F;BBB-Load-Balancer" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;ICTO&#x2F;BBB-Load-Balancer</a>

Been evaluating Jitsi all day, pretty good! I&#x27;m actually kind of impressed. Anyone have more experience who can elaborate on limitations and weaknesses we should be aware of before expanding to a larger internal pilot?