Re: Video chat software / options

[Douglas Lucas]

Does anyone have experience with, or thoughts on, Kast and TwoSeven? For
use cases of either a one to one video chat, small group video chat, or
large group video chat. Are these mostly for just drunk people with
masks on partying or could they be repurposed for more formal situations
like a virtual panel with audience attendees etc?

Re: Video chat software / options

[Douglas Lucas]

Hi cypherpunks,

For reference, some things I discovered researching this today for
several hours, this is more for an enduser perspective than either a
genuine expert perspective or the perspective of a Boomer incel fantasy
about being James Bond / Tony Stark while doing backflips and
fantasizing about going gay for Juliassar al-Assadnge or whatever.

*   Signal: won't work for video chat of more than two people, because
according to various mainstream sources accessed 22 April 2020, Signal
video chat is only 1 to 1

*   Wire: won't work for video chat of more than 4 people, because
according to official website accessed 22 April 2020, video conferencing
is available for up to only 4 participants, and audio conferencing is
available for up to only 10 participants.
https://wire.com/en/blog/is-your-video-conference-solution-secure/
https://wire.com/en/pricing/#pro/

*   Jitsi (i.e. Jitsi Meet): won't work for video chat for 10-20+
people, because according to an April 2020 Association for Computing
Machinery report, "does not scale well and can be unreliable" and "in
the default configuration, video is not mixed; instead every participant
gets all the audio and video streams. This may not scale well." Further,
see what Greg Newby said previously on this email list.
https://www.acm.org/virtual-conferences
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LLLniPkf48CCZyG_BNy1ylF2wXNlztqNEOnzNuMQmJc

*   TwoSeven: I have no experience with https://twoseven.xyz/ but it may
be of some relevance. It's a website and Chrome extension that has a
free version and pay versions/packages between $3 and $20 a month. It
allows chat, video, and audio, and is geared toward helping people
remote from one another watch simultaneously the following depending on
version/package: youtube, netflix, amazon, HBO, vimeo, and video files
users upload.

*   Kast: I have no experience with Kast, but it may be of some
relevance. It's either https://kastapp.co or https://kast.gg (not sure
which), formerly https://rabb.it, is a free or premium ($5/mo)
application for browser, mobile, or desktop that allows audio-video chat
and text chat during watch parties for youtube clips, users playing
computer games, etc.

*Kast and TwoSeven have a lot of competitors. See for example, 16
Sites Like Rabb.it - https://www.tech21century.com/sites-like-rabbit/ -
but from this tech guide for sex workers -
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Sd6EoFCFOTmG1_IW_07s_DxNGWEA0m8T/view -
it seems Kast and TwoSeven are the frontrunners in their respective
areas. Kast reminds me a bit of https://tinychat.com/ which was the big
solution for online video parties around Occupy/Anon/leak platform days
and is still running. Haha, some people have nothing else, can't move
on, and think it is still 2010, but thankfully for the rest of us life
continues and is amazing!

*   For one-to-one encrypted video chat, choices are Signal, Wire, or
Jitsi. Signal has an annoying social graphing problem that is
particularly problematic for vulnerable or marginalized individuals,
where installing Signal suddenly alerts your contacts that you have
Signal, see
https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007061452-Does-Signal-send-my-number-to-my-contacts-
and
https://community.signalusers.org/t/any-signal-user-that-has-your-phone-number-in-their-contacts-can-see-you-register-with-signal/4053/11
and
https://www.reddit.com/r/signal/wiki/faq#wiki_welcome_to_the_r.2Fsignal_faq.21.
Wire is based in Switzerland, Berlin, and EU. Jitsi comes from, as far
as I could make out during a few hours' research today, a DIY hackerish
background but was recently acquired by a Silicon Valley-based, publicly
traded VoIP company, 8x8 Inc. So if for one to one video you pick
between either Wire or Jitsi, that means picking between -- and this is
an educated guess and half joking -- the fancy solution presumably used
by money launderers corporations and pedo rings (Wire) or the slightly
Millenium Falcon-y Jitsi that will probably be great for another 1-3
years until 8x8 Inc. decides to sell and/or ruin their new toy.

*   If more participants are required, and there are no other options, the
Association for Computing Machinery -
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LLLniPkf48CCZyG_BNy1ylF2wXNlztqNEOnzNuMQmJc
- is recommending as of April 2020 that conference organizers use Zoom
with an awareness of the problems, such as crypto issues (
https://blog.rapid7.com/2020/04/02/dispelling-zoom-bugbears-what-you-need-to-know-about-the-latest-zoom-vulnerabilities/
)  and Zoombombing ( https://www.isc.upenn.edu/security/news/zoombombing
) and trying to mitigate those problems by following various guides,
such as Meredith Reitman's (
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Rvp6NfRNNs6e4bx2l07XWlB4vvevMnn9m-cu97jRhzw
) and Konrad Kording's anti-Zoombombing script (
https://medium.com/@kording/neuromatch-anti-zoombombing-script-842eabf160dc
) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation's guide (

Re: Video chat software / options

[Douglas Lucas]

Hi Greg,

Thanks, your two emails were extremely helpful! I especially liked the
ACM resources, your experience with Jitsi meeting of 10-12+ people
(which fits what ACM says), and the CCC talk. All of those I forwarded
along to a few other people. Thanks again for the awesome information.

Doug

On 2020-04-19 12:35, Greg Newby wrote:
> Hi, Doug. Just last week, the ACM came out with a thorough and interesting 
> guide on how to run a virtual conference:
>   https://www.acm.org/virtual-conferences
> 
> They link to an open Google Doc that lists lots of different resources and 
> their characteristics:
>   
> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LLLniPkf48CCZyG_BNy1ylF2wXNlztqNEOnzNuMQmJc/edit
> 
> There are also a number of other useful links and appendices. There is no 
> easy answer to the choice, since all the tools have limitations. They don't 
> dig much into security and privacy aspects, but do have focus on how to 
> restrict access only to registered persons.
> 
> Another resource is something I posted to cpunks about earlier. I'm attaching 
> the email I sent. It was a CCC talk that described the different software 
> they used. Mastadon & Jitsi were highlighted, among others.
> 
> Jitsi has a key limitation in how the video streams are sent, which makes 
> larger meetings a problem due to bandwidth management - I experienced this 
> myself, where a meeting with 10-12 people fell apart because attendees were 
> getting dropped, or couldn't receive all the participant streams.
> 
> Another personal experience I have is with Slack. Slack is actually pretty 
> good for live audio/video meetings of 10 or so people. The nice thing is that 
> if you're already having an ongoing Slack chat, you can launch a "call" any 
> time in the same channel.
> 
> It's nice to hear from you. Enjoy!
>  Greg
> 
> On Sat, Apr 18, 2020 at 06:24:23PM +, Douglas Lucas wrote:
>> Hey cypherpunks,
>>
>> So what video chat options are there that are less privacy violating and
>> social graphing than Zoom, Skype, etc, while still being at least
>> somewhat available to the everyday user? Imagine two use cases:
>>
>> 1. Audiovideo chat between Alice and Bob: they want to watch an online
>> movie together whether by sharing a screen or some other method, and
>> then have sexy times later by same audiovideo chat. Imagine further that
>> Bob uses Linux laptop and knows more or less what he's doing, while
>> Alice uses Windows or Apple or her standard-issue smartphone or w/e and
>> doesn't want to spend her little weekend time off paidwork trying to
>> configure stuff to meet some faraway incel's expectation of flawless
>> fantasy security.
>>
>> 2. A video panel or Q being hosted by your local friendly anarchist
>> bookstore. Maybe it needs 3-5 people on a panel talking, their famous
>> faces visible on the screen along with their audio while they debate
>> each on internecine leftist conflicts that distract from far more
>> rational propaganda of the deed, while the 20 people in the audience,
>> including people of all sorts of demographics who have a hard enough
>> time paying their bills online, have their audio and video forcibly off
>> so there's not random beeps and bloops and toddler singing during the
>> panel, but the audience could still type in Q questions or whatever.
>> It would also be cool if there was a film screening option -- imagine an
>> anarchist bookstore that prior to covid19 had been doing weekly film
>> screenings offline in their brick and mortar location, but now wants to
>> do something similar online, while making it hopefully accessible for
>> people without intense computer skills.
>>
>> How are Signal and Wire for the above?
>>
>> My big picture understanding has for a long time been that, 1. perfect
>> security is snake oil, the top spy agencies can crack anything if they
>> want given enough time and targetting interest, but that's not typically
>> relevant to the above use cases unless you're a Supreme Court justice or
>> an incel fantasizing about being James Bond, 2. encryption makes data
>> packet size much bigger, and large data size is already a problem with
>> video in cleartext, so there never has been a really good solution to
>> this problem. However #2 was my understanding as of like 5 years ago, so
>> I'm curious if some new solution has come out.
>>
>> It looks like EFF is fairly useless and using Zoom themselves. I suppose
>> if they're not gonna go after something meaningful, like how the
>> corporate voting gear in the US is closed source, they have to spend
>> that sweet Papa Omidyar cash and prestige somehow and produce little
>> guides about how to toggle your Zoom settings. Afte
>> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/what-you-should-know-about-online-tools-during-covid-19-crisis
>> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/cc-backgrounds-video-calls-eff
>> https://ssd.eff.org/
>>
>> Guides by Riseup Networks don't have much on video understandably
>> 

Re: Video chat software / options

[Douglas Lucas]

Thanks Cecilia, that Wikipedia page has been helpful.

On 2020-04-19 00:55, Cecilia Tanaka wrote:
> Hey, now I deserve a candie, yay!  Even feeling slower than a dead
> sloth, found this cute and useful link, wohooo!  ;D
> 
> "Comparison of Web Conferencing Software"
> 
> 

Re: Video chat software / options

[Greg Newby]

Hi, Doug. Just last week, the ACM came out with a thorough and interesting 
guide on how to run a virtual conference:
  https://www.acm.org/virtual-conferences

They link to an open Google Doc that lists lots of different resources and 
their characteristics:
  
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LLLniPkf48CCZyG_BNy1ylF2wXNlztqNEOnzNuMQmJc/edit

There are also a number of other useful links and appendices. There is no easy 
answer to the choice, since all the tools have limitations. They don't dig much 
into security and privacy aspects, but do have focus on how to restrict access 
only to registered persons.

Another resource is something I posted to cpunks about earlier. I'm attaching 
the email I sent. It was a CCC talk that described the different software they 
used. Mastadon & Jitsi were highlighted, among others.

Jitsi has a key limitation in how the video streams are sent, which makes 
larger meetings a problem due to bandwidth management - I experienced this 
myself, where a meeting with 10-12 people fell apart because attendees were 
getting dropped, or couldn't receive all the participant streams.

Another personal experience I have is with Slack. Slack is actually pretty good 
for live audio/video meetings of 10 or so people. The nice thing is that if 
you're already having an ongoing Slack chat, you can launch a "call" any time 
in the same channel.

It's nice to hear from you. Enjoy!
 Greg

On Sat, Apr 18, 2020 at 06:24:23PM +, Douglas Lucas wrote:
> Hey cypherpunks,
> 
> So what video chat options are there that are less privacy violating and
> social graphing than Zoom, Skype, etc, while still being at least
> somewhat available to the everyday user? Imagine two use cases:
> 
> 1. Audiovideo chat between Alice and Bob: they want to watch an online
> movie together whether by sharing a screen or some other method, and
> then have sexy times later by same audiovideo chat. Imagine further that
> Bob uses Linux laptop and knows more or less what he's doing, while
> Alice uses Windows or Apple or her standard-issue smartphone or w/e and
> doesn't want to spend her little weekend time off paidwork trying to
> configure stuff to meet some faraway incel's expectation of flawless
> fantasy security.
> 
> 2. A video panel or Q being hosted by your local friendly anarchist
> bookstore. Maybe it needs 3-5 people on a panel talking, their famous
> faces visible on the screen along with their audio while they debate
> each on internecine leftist conflicts that distract from far more
> rational propaganda of the deed, while the 20 people in the audience,
> including people of all sorts of demographics who have a hard enough
> time paying their bills online, have their audio and video forcibly off
> so there's not random beeps and bloops and toddler singing during the
> panel, but the audience could still type in Q questions or whatever.
> It would also be cool if there was a film screening option -- imagine an
> anarchist bookstore that prior to covid19 had been doing weekly film
> screenings offline in their brick and mortar location, but now wants to
> do something similar online, while making it hopefully accessible for
> people without intense computer skills.
> 
> How are Signal and Wire for the above?
> 
> My big picture understanding has for a long time been that, 1. perfect
> security is snake oil, the top spy agencies can crack anything if they
> want given enough time and targetting interest, but that's not typically
> relevant to the above use cases unless you're a Supreme Court justice or
> an incel fantasizing about being James Bond, 2. encryption makes data
> packet size much bigger, and large data size is already a problem with
> video in cleartext, so there never has been a really good solution to
> this problem. However #2 was my understanding as of like 5 years ago, so
> I'm curious if some new solution has come out.
> 
> It looks like EFF is fairly useless and using Zoom themselves. I suppose
> if they're not gonna go after something meaningful, like how the
> corporate voting gear in the US is closed source, they have to spend
> that sweet Papa Omidyar cash and prestige somehow and produce little
> guides about how to toggle your Zoom settings. Afte
> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/what-you-should-know-about-online-tools-during-covid-19-crisis
> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/cc-backgrounds-video-calls-eff
> https://ssd.eff.org/
> 
> Guides by Riseup Networks don't have much on video understandably
> https://riseup.net/en/security/resources
> https://riseup.net/en/security
> 
> Prism Break mentions something called Jami I've never heard of
> https://prism-break.org/en/all/
> 
> And yeah, Signal and Wire...? I know everything is fucked but using
> something less bad for the use cases outlined above seems better than
> diving headfirst into whatever the worst popular solutions are.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Doug
--- Begin Message ---
I just watched an informative talk from 

Re: Video chat software / options

[Cecilia Tanaka]

Hey, now I deserve a candie, yay!  Even feeling slower than a dead sloth,
found this cute and useful link, wohooo!  ;D

"Comparison of Web Conferencing Software"

Re: Video chat software / options

[Cecilia Tanaka]

On Sat, Apr 18, 2020, 21:41 Cecilia Tanaka 
wrote:  

And Kurt is right.  Everybody is talking about Jitsi, but never tested it.
>

Oh, boy, reading a bit about Zoom x Jitsi, learned both have bugs
problems...  :-/

>

Re: Video chat software / options

[Cecilia Tanaka]

On Sat, Apr 18, 2020, 21:17 Cecilia Tanaka  wrote:

> Sorry, already tried Signal, Wire, Discord, Matrix, Session, Telegram,
> WhatsApp, and probably one or two messengers more, but used all of them
> only for writing and spoken messages...  :((
>

Hmm, Slack too...  Still trying to remember, wait, I am slower than
usual...  :D

And Kurt is right.  Everybody is talking about Jitsi, but never tested it.

Ceci
--
Loving.  Caring.  Sharing.  Being Excellent To Each Other And To Our
Hackerspace.  <3
--
"Don't let anyone rob you of your imagination, your creativity, or your
curiosity.  It's your place in the world; it's your life.  Go on and do all
you can with it, and make it the life you want to live."  -  Mae Jemison

Re: Video chat software / options

[Kurt Buff - GSEC, GCIH]

I've been seeing Jitsi mentioned a fair amount - don't know anything about
it, beyond what you'll see here:

https://jitsi.org/

Kurt

On Sat, Apr 18, 2020 at 12:32 PM Douglas Lucas  wrote:

> Hey cypherpunks,
>
> So what video chat options are there that are less privacy violating and
> social graphing than Zoom, Skype, etc, while still being at least
> somewhat available to the everyday user? Imagine two use cases:
>
> 1. Audiovideo chat between Alice and Bob: they want to watch an online
> movie together whether by sharing a screen or some other method, and
> then have sexy times later by same audiovideo chat. Imagine further that
> Bob uses Linux laptop and knows more or less what he's doing, while
> Alice uses Windows or Apple or her standard-issue smartphone or w/e and
> doesn't want to spend her little weekend time off paidwork trying to
> configure stuff to meet some faraway incel's expectation of flawless
> fantasy security.
>
> 2. A video panel or Q being hosted by your local friendly anarchist
> bookstore. Maybe it needs 3-5 people on a panel talking, their famous
> faces visible on the screen along with their audio while they debate
> each on internecine leftist conflicts that distract from far more
> rational propaganda of the deed, while the 20 people in the audience,
> including people of all sorts of demographics who have a hard enough
> time paying their bills online, have their audio and video forcibly off
> so there's not random beeps and bloops and toddler singing during the
> panel, but the audience could still type in Q questions or whatever.
> It would also be cool if there was a film screening option -- imagine an
> anarchist bookstore that prior to covid19 had been doing weekly film
> screenings offline in their brick and mortar location, but now wants to
> do something similar online, while making it hopefully accessible for
> people without intense computer skills.
>
> How are Signal and Wire for the above?
>
> My big picture understanding has for a long time been that, 1. perfect
> security is snake oil, the top spy agencies can crack anything if they
> want given enough time and targetting interest, but that's not typically
> relevant to the above use cases unless you're a Supreme Court justice or
> an incel fantasizing about being James Bond, 2. encryption makes data
> packet size much bigger, and large data size is already a problem with
> video in cleartext, so there never has been a really good solution to
> this problem. However #2 was my understanding as of like 5 years ago, so
> I'm curious if some new solution has come out.
>
> It looks like EFF is fairly useless and using Zoom themselves. I suppose
> if they're not gonna go after something meaningful, like how the
> corporate voting gear in the US is closed source, they have to spend
> that sweet Papa Omidyar cash and prestige somehow and produce little
> guides about how to toggle your Zoom settings. Afte
>
> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/what-you-should-know-about-online-tools-during-covid-19-crisis
> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/cc-backgrounds-video-calls-eff
> https://ssd.eff.org/
>
> Guides by Riseup Networks don't have much on video understandably
> https://riseup.net/en/security/resources
> https://riseup.net/en/security
>
> Prism Break mentions something called Jami I've never heard of
> https://prism-break.org/en/all/
>
> And yeah, Signal and Wire...? I know everything is fucked but using
> something less bad for the use cases outlined above seems better than
> diving headfirst into whatever the worst popular solutions are.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Doug
>

Re: Video chat software / options

[Cecilia Tanaka]

Sorry, already tried Signal, Wire, Discord, Matrix, Session, Telegram,
WhatsApp, and probably one or two messengers more, but used all of them
only for writing and spoken messages...  :((

Good luck!  Keep yourself safe and happy!  <3

Ceci
--
Loving.  Caring.  Sharing.  Being Excellent To Each Other And To Our
Hackerspace.  <3
--
"Don't let anyone rob you of your imagination, your creativity, or your
curiosity.  It's your place in the world; it's your life.  Go on and do all
you can with it, and make it the life you want to live."  -  Mae Jemison

Video chat software / options

[Douglas Lucas]

Hey cypherpunks,

So what video chat options are there that are less privacy violating and
social graphing than Zoom, Skype, etc, while still being at least
somewhat available to the everyday user? Imagine two use cases:

1. Audiovideo chat between Alice and Bob: they want to watch an online
movie together whether by sharing a screen or some other method, and
then have sexy times later by same audiovideo chat. Imagine further that
Bob uses Linux laptop and knows more or less what he's doing, while
Alice uses Windows or Apple or her standard-issue smartphone or w/e and
doesn't want to spend her little weekend time off paidwork trying to
configure stuff to meet some faraway incel's expectation of flawless
fantasy security.

2. A video panel or Q being hosted by your local friendly anarchist
bookstore. Maybe it needs 3-5 people on a panel talking, their famous
faces visible on the screen along with their audio while they debate
each on internecine leftist conflicts that distract from far more
rational propaganda of the deed, while the 20 people in the audience,
including people of all sorts of demographics who have a hard enough
time paying their bills online, have their audio and video forcibly off
so there's not random beeps and bloops and toddler singing during the
panel, but the audience could still type in Q questions or whatever.
It would also be cool if there was a film screening option -- imagine an
anarchist bookstore that prior to covid19 had been doing weekly film
screenings offline in their brick and mortar location, but now wants to
do something similar online, while making it hopefully accessible for
people without intense computer skills.

How are Signal and Wire for the above?

My big picture understanding has for a long time been that, 1. perfect
security is snake oil, the top spy agencies can crack anything if they
want given enough time and targetting interest, but that's not typically
relevant to the above use cases unless you're a Supreme Court justice or
an incel fantasizing about being James Bond, 2. encryption makes data
packet size much bigger, and large data size is already a problem with
video in cleartext, so there never has been a really good solution to
this problem. However #2 was my understanding as of like 5 years ago, so
I'm curious if some new solution has come out.

It looks like EFF is fairly useless and using Zoom themselves. I suppose
if they're not gonna go after something meaningful, like how the
corporate voting gear in the US is closed source, they have to spend
that sweet Papa Omidyar cash and prestige somehow and produce little
guides about how to toggle your Zoom settings. Afte
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/what-you-should-know-about-online-tools-during-covid-19-crisis
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/cc-backgrounds-video-calls-eff
https://ssd.eff.org/

Guides by Riseup Networks don't have much on video understandably
https://riseup.net/en/security/resources
https://riseup.net/en/security

Prism Break mentions something called Jami I've never heard of
https://prism-break.org/en/all/

And yeah, Signal and Wire...? I know everything is fucked but using
something less bad for the use cases outlined above seems better than
diving headfirst into whatever the worst popular solutions are.

Thanks!

Doug