Still using Zoom, Google Meet or Microsoft Teams in your organisation? Then it’s worth considering a switch to an autonomous, privacy-friendly tool. On this Digital Independence Day, we give you an overview of the downsides of the current big tech video calling providers, and a list of great alternatives.
Digital Independence Day
Digital Independence Day takes place every first Sunday of the month. It’s an initiative recently launched in Germany by the Chaos Computer Club and Save Social, together with a large group of German organisations. The day is all about switching to privacy-friendly alternatives to big tech, making your organisation less dependent on big tech software services.
On the agenda this Sunday: online meeting tools and video conferencing tools.
Why is leaving Google Meet, Zoom and Microsoft Teams a good idea?
Whether it’s for a meeting, a webinar or a gathering of your community: video calling is personal, easy and quick. Many organisations still use Google Meet or Microsoft Teams for video calls. These applications are often already available in the work environment and are simple to use. But: all three of these big tech tools come from the United States, they’re not very transparent, and the companies behind them hold enormous monopolistic market power.
Autonomy issues
It’s been clear for a while now: big tech companies have gained an enormous amount of power. These companies have even become pawns that can be deployed in geopolitics. Should tensions with the US escalate, they could pull the plug on software from Microsoft and Google, and with it, on your digital infrastructure. To prevent this, it’s wise to switch to European software.
Think of others
Especially if you also want to video call with people outside your own (work) circle, it’s good to stop and consider whether you really want to use these tools. By inviting people from outside your organisation to a video call facilitated by these tech companies, you’re forcing the people you’re talking to to use them too. Even if they’d rather talk Big Tech-free.
Fortunately, there are plenty of alternatives for organisations that want to become less dependent on Big Tech.
What should you consider before switching?
First of all, ask yourself: who will I be calling? Is it a limited or fixed group of users? In either case, it doesn’t really matter much, and you can get going fairly quickly with most tools. Is the group larger, or are new people often involved? Then make sure joining a call involves as few hurdles as possible. Even having to create an account can be a barrier, and you don’t want to be playing helpdesk at the start of every call.
Some tools are turnkey and can be used online straight away. Some free tools, such as Jitsi, also offer a paid version. This lets you set up your own secure environment for your organisation, and by paying the makers, you also support the further development and survival of such a solution. So it cuts both ways.
If security is of the utmost importance to your organisation, you’ll probably have to make some compromises on user-friendliness. Guaranteeing security simply takes some effort. But that doesn’t mean the tools that don’t specialise in it are NOT secure. One-to-one calls in Jitsi, for example, are encrypted by default, and group calls can be secured too (albeit with some extra configuration).
Open source software has to run somewhere. Consider whether your organisation can host and manage it itself, or whether you’d rather leave that to a specialised company or service provider. Cooperative models are also on the rise, in which users organise hosting and management together, with limited profit motives. Perhaps you can join forces to save costs.
Do it with Signal
Almost everyone has recently switched from WhatsApp to Signal as their everyday messaging service (right?). What many people don’t know is that Signal also makes video calling very easy. Video calling with Signal works both on your phone and via the Signal app you can install on your computer or laptop.
With a recent version of Signal, you can easily create a ‘call link’ to add to a calendar invitation or social media post. This makes it easy to invite people to a group call, even if their number isn’t in your contact list.
A major downside of Signal, though, is that everyone taking part has to install Signal. And although Signal protects your messages and video calls from prying eyes and is not-for-profit (it runs on donations), the entire network is centralised, and under the hood it also relies on infrastructure from large cloud providers such as Google and Amazon.
Still, Signal is a good video calling option if, for example, your team already communicates via Signal. But of course, it’s still an American company.
Do it with Matrix
To get around Signal’s downsides, you can also use tools that work in a ‘federated’ way. On a federated platform, users with an account on one server can also chat with users on all other servers on the internet. This creates one big network, without the need for central control and without monopolies forming.
A widely used system that already has millions of users is Matrix. And although Matrix is best known for the chat rooms that run on it, it can also be used for video calls. There’s even a web app made specifically for video calling: https://call.element.io/, which you can use without a Matrix account.
Does your organisation already use Matrix for internal chat? Then a video call is just a click away. And you can easily meet up with people from other organisations that run their own Matrix server.
Matrix is extremely secure. That’s also why this technology is increasingly being adopted by European governments as their own internal communication platform. In Belgium, Germany and France, for example. So if security and independence are decisive factors for your organisation, video calling via Matrix might be a good idea.
You can video call with Matrix if you have a Matrix account. There are public servers where you can create an account and get started fairly quickly. Want to keep everything under your own control? Then you can also host a Matrix server for your organisation yourself, or have it hosted.
Still, many people find Matrix complicated. Because it’s so secure, you have to take extra good care of your ‘encryption’/backup key, for instance, and sometimes you have to use a string of emojis to verify that your contacts are who they say they are 🤯 👀 💩 🔥 🙈. Not equally quick and easy in every situation.
Do it with Jitsi
Just want to video call easily in your web browser, without having to install an app or create accounts first? Then Jitsi might be a handy tool. With Jitsi, you can easily create a link that brings people together in a video call. The organisation that develops Jitsi lets you use their tool for free at https://meet.jit.si/. You only need to register if you want to start a meeting room; other participants can join anonymously and without registering.
Because Jitsi is open source, you can also install it on your own server and host your own secure environment. But hosting and managing Jitsi does involve quite a bit. Jitsi depends heavily on a good internet connection, cooperative firewalls and security certificates. Don’t have the patience to play system administrator at the start of every meeting? Then you can also ask 8×8, the organisation that developed Jitsi, to set up and maintain your own ‘Jitsi as a Service’ server for your organisation.
Jitsi works very well for calls with one other person, and with a handful of participants it usually goes fine too. But the busier it gets, the more video streams have to be exchanged between participants, and with Jitsi that can sometimes lead to unexpected problems. Expecting a lot of participants? Then do a thorough test, or…
… do it with BigBlueButton
BigBlueButton has a slightly different background. It wasn’t developed as a replacement for or alternative to office software, but as a platform made for education. That gives it a somewhat different approach: you can make a clear distinction between speakers and participants, it includes various presentation and collaboration tools, and you can easily record and archive sessions. A very good choice, then, if you want to organise a webinar or give online presentations to larger groups.
At PublicSpaces, we use BigBlueButton every day. The video quality is reliably stable and rarely leads to major technical problems. Joining a ‘Room’ takes a few more steps than you might be used to. You have to explicitly choose whether to join with your own microphone or to listen only, and switching on your camera takes an extra step too. In group sessions that’s an advantage, as it’s often not at all necessary for everyone to turn on their camera and microphone.
BigBlueButton is an open source platform too. Unlike Jitsi, there are no known public servers. If you want to use it for your organisation, there are fortunately service providers in the Netherlands that offer it and are happy to configure a server for you.
Faites-le avec Visio
You read above that the French government uses Matrix as a communication platform. France is making great strides in making its entire infrastructure more autonomous and independent of Big Tech. They’re working hard on a complete office environment that can replace Microsoft and Google: LaSuite (just as the Dutch government, incidentally, is working on Mijn Bureau).
Part of LaSuite is the tool Visio. And although there are already plenty of open source video calling tools, the French government decided to develop a new one anyway. In terms of quality, functionality and ease of use, Visio is meant to become a tool with ‘Zoom-level performance’ and quality. Among other things, Visio will include options for automated transcripts or subtitles during calls.
Work for the French government? Then you’re in luck: you can already use it. But you can get started with it as a Dutch citizen too. There’s a cooperative version of LaSuite (https://lasuite.coop/) where you can use Visio for a reasonable fee. Visio is also part of what’s on offer at the Dutch https://mosa.cloud/, which provides LaSuite’s tools in the Netherlands.
With the French government as client and funder, aiming to roll Visio out to all civil servants, this is definitely a tool to keep an eye on.
Do it differently
And there are a few more tools that might be worth highlighting.
Does your organisation already have a Nextcloud environment for sharing files? Then chances are it also includes Nextcloud Talk. Very handy for calling straight from your office environment. As you’d expect from Nextcloud, Talk is packed with features. You can easily invite guests, create polls and share documents during calls.
And hot off the press: Swiss company Proton (of Proton Mail) is also launching a video calling tool: Proton Meet. Proton is known for its strong security, and these calls will also be encrypted end to end. A small disclaimer: although Proton has made some of its tools available as open source, we don’t yet know whether Proton Meet will be a tool that can be self-hosted or hosted by third parties.
As you can see, there’s really no excuse left to use Zoom, Google Meet or Teams for video calls. There are plenty of alternatives that keep you in control of what happens with your calls and data. And of course, you can always ask yourself: do we really need to video call? Calling with video generally uses more bandwidth (and therefore energy) than calling without. And if you really want to have a good conversation: meet up in a beautiful forest or park! Spring is just around the corner ☀️.
Good luck with your switch!
A few disclaimers
Everything is in flux
Companies can always change. What is a foundation today could become a for-profit company later. What is a European provider today could later be bought up by a Chinese company. So always stay alert to the infrastructure behind the tools and services you use. Want real control over your digital infrastructure? Then use our Digitale Spoelkeuken to put your entire infrastructure under the microscope every year.
Tip: with open source products you host yourself, you always sidestep this. What’s in your own hands stays in your own hands.
This wasn’t an exhaustive list of alternatives
There are many more video calling providers out there. We’ve given a selection of distinctive providers, each with their own special features. For more alternatives, take a look at Open Alternative, European Alternatives and Open Source Alternative.
