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.
I guess I don’t need their app anymore on my phone, then. More free space to me.
Though using an other instance as mentioned by other comments is also an option, I think the mobile app supports that too, even if it’s a bit complicated
Edit: after reading the article, this might really not be their fault. At the end they also encourage the reader to host it themselves. They are not very transparent with what’s the actual problem, though…
Yes, the mobile app supports third-party servers, though I wouldn’t call it complicated.
If you want to join a room, all you do is type/paste the full URL to it instead of just the name. “Open in App” functionality will also work regardless of the server.
If you want to host one on a third-party server, you just go into the options and replace the “https://meet.jit.si” address with one of the third-party server. Then when you create a room, it will use that server.
Probably complicated isn’t the best word, my issue with it is that if I understand it correctly, you would always need to change the server address if you need to connect to a meeting that was created at a different server
If you paste in the complete URL to a meeting (“https://example.org/FourRandomEnglishWords” instead of “FourRandomEnglishWords”) or use the “Open in App” link that a meeting’s web page shows, then there’s no need to.
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
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.
“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
It’s not the only reason to use jitsi, just that most people wouldn’t bother seeking any alternative if they didn’t care.
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.
I imagine that, at least, the videos wouldn’t go through those SAAS providers, and that’s relatively a plus still.
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
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.
RIP Jitsi ಠ_ಠ
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.
If I’m reading it correctly, you only need one person in the meeting to have one of those accounts.
@esaru
Shodan finds 21k instances. https://meet.ffmuc.net/ and https://meet.element.io/ are just two, and I don’t expect them to require log in.I’m on mobile, but does meet.element.io just work? I would expect that to only work for Matrix users
@ReversalHatchery
Just verified (from mobile) and it just works 🤷
Tbf I’d not get angry if it was jihadist recruitment, child porn, human trafficking, etc. etc.
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.
But now the illegal content is not happening on their owned instance, taking them off the hook.
Communication network providers in the EU generally aren’t liable for illegal activity of their users.
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.
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.
Criminals ruin everything.
Oh hell no. Why they dont make it optional?
People were doing illegal stuffs on it
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.
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.
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.
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.
I get what you are saying, but the Venn diagram is basically overlapping circles. Yes, they are not exactly the same thing, but you would be hard-pressed to find somebody who advocates for/regularly uses open-source software yet isn’t as passionate about privacy. It is reasonable to assume one who advocates for one is also advocating for the other. 
That’s just not true at all. You’re talking from a very small circle if you think most OSS is used by privacy buffs. The largest users of OSS are companies, followed by techies who enjoy the challenge or the ownership. Privacy wonks are by far the smallest userbase.
I did not say people who use it. I said people who advocate for and regularly use OSS. Plenty of people use open source software because it is the most popular or it is what was recommended to them. Obviously that group exists in large number.
What kind of illegal stuff?
starting video chat with one self, with nobody else involved
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.
Well, time to find another instance, cause fuck that noise
RIP
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 its downfall
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.
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.
Here are some interesting lists of alternative instances:
https://jitsi.github.io/handbook/docs/community/community-instances/
https://ladatano.partidopirata.com.ar/jitsimeter/
https://timo-osterkamp.eu/random-redirect.htmlBy the way, by default jitsi is not end-to-end encrypted if you have more than two people in the call or need to use the videobrige for other reasons. https://jitsi.org/e2ee-in-jitsi/
Update: The e2ee implementation seems to have some issues as well: https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/1118
Firefox <116 is currently not able to use the e2e-encryption, blink based browser already support it. Firefox 117 will provide the necessary infrastructure as well. I don’t know if jitsi would have ot be patched to detect the firefox implementation. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1631263#c58
I didn’t know Jitsi has those issues with default E2E.
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.
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