The last time I tried to make video chat work with people, we dived between jitsi, facebook messenger, zoom… until something worked well enough. what are people using here now? Jitsi? Google Meet? Whatsapp? Facebook Messenger? Zoom? Skype? Facetime, somehow? The builtin thing in matrix that used to be jitsi but I think they updated it? Microsoft Teams? What?
Whatever the other person uses. Everyone uses something different and I raarely feel like convincing someone to switch to something new, much less helping them figure out how to do it. Of my circle of friends, it’s least painful for me to just find out what they already use and install it myself.
Unless it’s facetime.
Good catch. That’s one I’ve never encountered. Also now that I think of it, if Facebook has video calls, I wouldn’t install it.
True as far as you calling them, but they can call us on Facetime.
I usually use Signal.
Signal.
ah, I forgot about Signal since I don’t like to video chat alone.
What do you mean? You can group call
If you have 100 friends online, maybe 2 of them will be using signal. Signal’s adoption rate for normies is ABYSMAL
I know more normies on signal than I have online friends, so it’s just subjective
Doesn’t make much sense with just one videostream and no audience
/s
alright, to spell out the joke: nobody uses signal. I wouldn’t be able to pay my friends to install signal. there’s nobody to chat with.
Oh, everyone I know uses it so that didn’t really hit the mark.
Really? Are you a web developer? Reporter? The only people I know on Signal are a reporter, who hates using it but needs to for sources, and a friend from undergrad (a tech school) who… probably doesn’t use it anymore, I haven’t actually been in touch with her.
It’s functionally the same as WhatsApp, without the Facebook bullshit. It’s not some weird utilitarian program to “hate” 😂
I use it to speak to all my friends and family.
Likely just not in the US. Many other countries never had unlimited texting plans, so messaging apps that could bypass SMS became very popular when they came about.
SMS is just old fashioned and outdated around the time we stopped using flipphones and T9
Literally all of my friends use it and since recently even my parents and family. But if you have WhatsApp, Viber, Discord, WeeChat, Kik and Signal… people will say… ah I’ll use Viber to reach you and leave it at that. You have to get rid of others and then people start moving.
Not everyone’s friends are idiots.
Signal
This. Slowly but surely everyone around me has migrated to Signal. It’s reliable and avoids all kinds of restrictions while remaining secure and private. Nothing more can be asked of it.
Nothing more can be asked of it.
Arguable, the ability it already had of being able to also receive SMS so you wouldn’t be stuck using two apps to accommodate the non Signal users of your life.
Yeah most people I know that used signal stopped using it when they took this away.
I use like twelve apps to acommodate the non-Signal users of my life… And Signal is pretty much just a note-to-self app at this point, nobody else uses it.
I mean, they could enable automatic cloud backups (and I do mean enable, the solution is built into the system quite neatly and their automatic backups are already well-encrypted so they’re just being ridiculous about security theater instead of letting us have a very important feature). And they could stand to make the cross-device experience (much) better.
but mostly, I wish anybody I knew used it. I’m wondering what kind of circle you’re in where everybody started using signal.
I wish anybody I knew used it.
I was the first person I know to even hear about it. I’ve gotten a few people on it, but it’s a harder sell now that they don’t support SMS. Back when they did, anyone could use it as their main messaging app. Now it can only be used to message other people who have it, and nobody wants to switch to something that they can only use to talk to one person.
I was the first in my entire immediate family, got them all to switch to it. Helps that it’s easy to use
so they’re just being ridiculous about security theater instead of letting us have a very important feature)
Have you ever checked the size of the backups, especially the people who never delete things? How many people are throwing money signals way, and do you think more servers and storage would be free for them? That would probably end Signal being free.
I didn’t say they should back up on their servers. I think they should enable Androi’ds built in feature to save a file to a cloud location so I can auto-save backups to my cloud server of choice.
Jitsi.
No installs required on any participant. No login required (except for host recently). No time limit or user limit (maybe there is but we use it and have never had any problems). Works awesome.
If something costs nothing then you are the product though. Have you looked into their TOS?
Jitsi is FOSS and you can self-host it.
Yes. They’re quite reasonable, especially considering you don’t even need an account. https://tosdr.org/en/service/2201
It’s a Free Software product. They are owned by 8x8 which charges for its video solutions, but Jitsi is absolutely free and Free. https://www.8x8.com/products/plans-and-pricing
you don’t even need an account.
That’s sadly not true anymore for their own hosted service:
https://jitsi.org/blog/authentication-on-meet-jit-si/
tl;dr: you need to login with a Google, Facebook or Github login to create a room
Wa wa wa FOSS nerds. Don’t try and push shit on me if you don’t fully understand it.
Google meet for most people and WhatsApp video with family.
Everyone I communicate with regularly uses Signal, so Signal when it’s needed. But it’s very rare.
For work, Jitsi. Also Whereby.
Jitsi’s the easiest cause you can just pop it open and start using it without registration. And the rooms you use are deleted after some amount of days (can’t remember exactly how many days).
Jitsi +1, so damn easy. Especially compared to emailing out a meeting link in Microsoft teams.
Discord.
Zoom was the easiest, since you can send someone a link and the other person doesn’t have to download anything, but I think plenty of other video conferencing apps have that feature now.
Mostly Meet. My family is mostly on android and it comes pre installed and built into the phone app most of the time so it’s really easy to get the older family members to use. I did have to have my Parents download it on their iPhones but they didn’t fight cause video calling the grandchild is important lol.
Whatever you used don’t use Microsoft teams. I’m so so sick and tired of that piece of crap. Literally anything will fail, at random. Need to demo a software update to a coworker? Ups, screen share suddenly just gives a black display. Now your audio just flat out refuses to work. Now you don’t have a camera. Half the calls I get won’t ring on my Desktop, incant pick up the call. Teams mobile on Android is a similar shit show.
Then, Go to google Meet, everything works perfectly fine and the video quality is just plain better.
Yet so many companies have this “we need to do everything with Microsoft because Microsoft goooood”
Edit: just saw this is an Android sub. My bad. Still, I’ll leave it here because teams on Android is a shit show as well, so is Microsoft skype.
I use WhatsApp with my immediate family, outside of which I just don’t do video calls at all
I avoid video chat as much as possible, but use Jitsi at work.
Meet, Discord, Signal. Depends on who I’m calling.
Work: MS teams if it’s internal or the client uses teams. Zoom typically if they don’t. Slack for on demand calls.
Home: what’s app video calls.
