From conferences and celebrations to dates, we all live in videoconferencing apps now. After a series of privacy and security snafus at Zoom, which has become virtually synonymous with videoconferencing during the Covid-19 pandemic, lots of companies and people are wondering what service is safest for our discussions.
Emil Ivov says you should not need to trust anyone. Ivov is the creator of the open source text and video chat software Jitsi and head of video collaboration at 8×8, a company that got Jitsi in2018 The company offers services built on Jitsi’s code, but still pays designers to preserve the open-source variation.
Jitsi Meet is a videoconferencing application with useful functions like the ability to password-protect your meetings or kick people off a conference. But what sets it apart from many well-known videoconferencing services is that it’s totally free and can run entirely on your own hardware. You can download the video bridge software application and utilize it to host videoconferences that buddies and colleagues can join through their web browser. The parent company 8×8 can’t snoop on your conversation due to the fact that it doesn’t have access to your computer. And since it’s open source, you can inspect the code to ensure there aren’t any back doors. “We ‘d like you to trust us but you do not have to,” Ivov says.
That was a huge part of why the Italian company WeSchool included Jitsi into its online classroom software application. “Open-source options can help you see what’s under the hood, which is especially pertinent when you’re handling underage trainees’ security,” says WeSchool CEO Marco De Rossi.
Not everyone wants to run their own video server or pore over source code. That’s why people pay for 8×8’s Jitsi-based Video Fulfilling service. Like a lot of videoconferencing companies, 8×8 has seen a rise in interest since the Covid-19 pandemic. The company states its Jitsi-based 8×8 Video Fulfilling service now has around 13 million regular monthly active users, up fr