I work very hard to keep Facebook out of my life. I run an ad-blocker and I don't log into my (inert) Facebook account outside of privacy mode (or a VM). Unfortunately, I don't have a choice about using Zoom. So it sucks that I'm effectively getting backdoored with this nonsense. Why is it OK to expose my information to an advertising company like Facebook without asking for permission first? Because everyone else does it?

agreed, I'm the same except i have no FB account.

I can't help but feel this sudden Zoom "panic" is coming from large (and incompetent) tech companies who are not happy with an upstart.

This also related to their horrendous privacy policy [0]

[0]: https://blogs.harvard.edu/doc/2020/03/27/zoom/

> But in the Zoom app, you can’t tell if or how your personal data is being harvested.

> (think, for example, Google Ads and Google Analytics).

> There’s no need to think about those, because both are widely known for compromising personal privacy

No need to think about google. Not sure about that one. Surely there should be more of a panic about google/facebook? Why the sudden zoom moral panic?

> Why the sudden pearl clutching at zoom when everyone is using facebook,

Presumably, as an enterprise solution they have major enterprise customers that may have a corporate policy disallowing facebook and google use.

cant help but feel like hit squads from the lagging competition

I agree, this level of synthetic concern doesn't feel like "grass roots".

MS did a terrible job with Skype and Lync. No doubt they were expecting to be able to bind it to exchange server and then create a coupling that embedded into an effective monopoly, creating yet another bad user experience that somehow becomes "the norm".

Hopefully at some point MS will compete by improving their products and we will have a better WFH experience.