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.

  • Gunpachi
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    302 years ago

    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.

      • Peruvian_Skies
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        132 years ago

        Possibly stupid question: if they found out that people were doing illegal stuff on it, doesn’t that mean that they were monitoring people’s conferences? I thought that the FOSS community was big on privacy.

        • @notabot@lemm.ee
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          362 years ago

          I imagine they’re receiving reports from other parties, such as law enforcement, that there are inappropriate things happening, rather than monitoring the streams themselves.

        • @Anamana@feddit.de
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          2 years ago

          No, because we don’t know how they got the information. Someone might as well just have reported it, or it was forwarded from law enforcement.

        • Amju Wolf
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          62 years ago

          Théry are plenty of FOSS people who don’t believe in privacy. Just because you like openness in one thing doesn’t mean you want it in another. Though there is probably a larger overlap.

  • @Kajika@lemmy.ml
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    512 years ago

    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?

    • garrett
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      12 years ago

      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.

    • @cerevant@lemm.ee
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      552 years ago

      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.

      • 𝒍𝒆𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒏
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        282 years ago

        Yepp I agree, that kind of cryptic speak and this kind of drastic action taken by a FOSS project likely eludes to something of this nature IMO.

        If they want to continue to appeal to businesses they’re almost certainly not going to release a statement saying people were sharing illegal material on our platform especially when they’re not a big well-known company like Facebook, Google and Microsoft, where normal people tend to disappointingly dismiss bad findings with a “benefit of the doubt” stance.

        I assume their hosted version doesn’t have this limitation? In that sense, this news really is a non-issue I think, considering everyone usually has one of those three accounts. Someone looking for privacy should probably host their own IMO

        • @megsmagik@feddit.it
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          12 years ago

          I don’t understand, even if I use a google login I haven’t necessarily give my real name to google so why is it safer for them? Anyone can create a new email with google and particularly people sharing illegal material wouldn’t use their real personal email so what’s the point?

          • 𝒍𝒆𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒏
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            22 years ago

            Law enforcement can subpoena Google for breadcrumbs, and then go to data brokers for the missing pieces. It’s not perfect, but this likely isn’t the reason for Jitsi doing this.

            The real reason likely falls along the line of the extra requirement driving people away from misusing the service, if they now need a VPN + killswitch and a burner “faang” account to share illegal content. They’ll just go to the next common denominator sadly, resulting in truly anonymous services dropping like flies (anonfiles.io being the last example of this)

          • @esaru@beehaw.orgOP
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            22 years ago

            Is a mobile phone number not required for a Google account? In many countries, including all EU ones, you need to authenticate yourself when ordering a SIM card. This makes your phone number your personal ID. Your Google account is connected to your person, and what you do on Jitsi after logging in with your Google account as well. It’s easier to track back to you that way.

            • @megsmagik@feddit.it
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              12 years ago

              Yeah I didn’t think about the phone number, I made my google account a long time ago and they didn’t use to ask you for your number but now every service needs it for “security” reasons

      • @Smoke@beehaw.org
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        82 years ago

        But why a Google/FB/MS account? Why isn’t an email account from an established provider enough, why centralise to three megacorps?

        • Shadow
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          42 years ago

          There’s plenty of disposable email services out there.

          • @Smoke@beehaw.org
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            22 years ago

            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.

          • @Smoke@beehaw.org
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            32 years ago

            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.

            • @cerevant@lemm.ee
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              42 years ago

              I didn’t say that. Security and privacy are nearly opposites. This is a security decision.

  • The Cuuuuube
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    1192 years ago

    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

    • bedrooms
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      102 years ago

      I imagine that, at least, the videos wouldn’t go through those SAAS providers, and that’s relatively a plus still.

    • @masterspace@lemmy.ca
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      52 years ago

      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.

    • @gelberhut@lemdro.id
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      52 years ago

      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?

      • The Cuuuuube
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        92 years ago

        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

        • @gelberhut@lemdro.id
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          32 years ago

          “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.

          • The Cuuuuube
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            62 years ago

            “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

      • @anlumo@feddit.de
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        42 years ago

        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.

    • Name
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      202 years ago

      Its like when OnlyFans declares they wouldn’t allow adult content

      So… Tumblr?

        • snooggums
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          232 years ago

          I laughed pretty hard at OnlyFans trying to remove the only thing that I was aware they hosted.

      • The Cuuuuube
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        132 years ago

        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

  • PrinzKasper
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    52 years ago

    If its open-source, couldn’t somebody just fork it and remove the login requirement?

    • sab
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      292 years ago

      You can self host it as well. This is just a restriction of the online service - the problem being that most people are not going to self-host their conference calls.

      • @mark@programming.dev
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        22 years ago

        Yeah they’d have to maintain upgrades security patches etc and could get pricey depending on how much storage and bandwidth is involved.

  • elouboub
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    2 years ago

    Lol, it was my GOTO specifically because it doesn’t require a login and I can send it to my parents who need minimal clicks to enter the room. I even have family that doesn’t have a github, facebook, nor google account, so they won’t be able to join.

    Amazing move Jitsi.

    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.

    What kind of “illegal things” were they doing? Say it, so that we can comprehend. Make it make sense.

    • bedrooms
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      182 years ago

      Tbf I’d not get angry if it was jihadist recruitment, child porn, human trafficking, etc. etc.

      • @knokelmaat@beehaw.org
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        72 years ago

        But won’t those criminals always find another way of communicating? If you’re doing something illegal, it’s worth it to you to go through some hoops to have safe and private communication. All this does is remove that option from less tech literate people.

          • @koper@feddit.nl
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            42 years ago

            Communication network providers in the EU generally aren’t liable for illegal activity of their users.

            • conciselyverbose
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              52 years ago

              That doesn’t make it a non-issue. Ignoring the obvious ethical issues, there are still serious costs to addressing conduct they’re made aware of, both in terms of actual man hours and mental health of any employees, and the actual bandwidth of the abusive traffic.

    • snooggums
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      202 years ago

      Safe to assume it was child porn, because that ends up being an issue on any service that lets people share images or video privately. By not stating it directly, they don’t prompt news organizations to quote the company in click bait articles about how their platform enables child porn as if that wasn’t a universal issue that all services have to actively discourage.

    • @jcg@halubilo.social
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      52 years ago

      If I’m reading it correctly, you only need one person in the meeting to have one of those accounts.

  • @Jummit@lemmy.one
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    2 years ago

    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.

    • conciselyverbose
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      2 years ago

      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.

      This sounds to me like a pattern of people using it for actual serious crimes (with the obvious guess being video sharing of sex crimes/trafficking/kids). I understand that that justification is used for a lot of extremely invasive privacy violations, and stuff like scanning every file in the name of that is too far, IMO, but if you’re the only platform with resources to handle that traffic that allows anonymity, it’s very likely to grow at a significantly larger rate than the rest of your traffic.

      You can’t (shouldn’t) scan every file every individual sends to every other individual in order to prevent it, but once you have a platform that’s capable of supporting community-type activity, it’s a very real issue that you can face.

      “You can host yourself with your own choices on vetting participation because here are the tools to do it” isn’t really a bad line to draw. But you can’t have your servers be a central point for that.

  • Display Name
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    32 years ago

    You can also use matrix. Matrix currently uses jitsi. In the future it’ll use “element call” but right now, jitsi.

    • z3rOR0ne
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      22 years ago

      Ah. Thank you. Decent work around, still more steps sadly enough, but it’ll have to do.