Zoom buys Keybase

I saw this announcement on Twitter today

Announcements from Keybase and Zoom.

If you do not know Keybase it is a service that provides encryption. I think it originally implemented PGP in Javascript so you could do various actions via the web. I created an account years ago as it also lets you prove that you control on-line accounts my posting digitally signed messages. Later they added messaging, file storage, GIT (code versioning) and team services. All this is free. The have had funding from Stellar Lumens with whom they did a big airdrop, but had to stop it due to major abuse.

I know some people were looking at adding the facility to authenticate Steem accounts. I had hoped this would at least be done for Hive.

I trust Keybase as they have been audited and they are serious about encryption, which is vital to privacy and authentication.

Some of the responses to the tweet were quite negative with people saying they will close their Keybase accounts. Companies get bought all the time and some seem created with that aim to get a big payout for the founders (e.g. Ned).

We do know that Zoom need good encryption and they have had issues with it. I used their video conferencing service years ago for work, but it has become much more popular during the lockdown. I saw mention of it rapidly going to 20x the previous usage. That is likely to be mostly people using the free service. They have come under intense scrutiny and been picked up on various flaws. They use some developers in China and were serving encryption keys from there, so people have suggested that they may be partly controlled by the government there.

I suspect that Zoom are not particularly 'evil', and others agree. They are a business who will suffer if they are seen to be exploiting their customers beyond what they will accept. Of course Facebook and others get these accusations too, but people accept the compromise of usefulness over giving away their data.

For most of my Zoom usage I am not too bothered about the Chinese listening in, which I doubt they do. If you need more secure communications then you can pay for alternatives. I have seen open source Jitsi mentioned, but have not tried it yet. Zoom is just the default everyone has installed now.

I wish the Keybase team well and I really hope that this does not mean the end of the services they have offered. Zoom should have the money to fund it. I would consider paying for what I use if it was reasonable. I might be more worried if Google had bought it as they have shut down numerous services that I liked.

The IT business landscape is continually changing. What we do not really want are monopolies. This is one reason I was attracted to Steem as it looked like it could be decentralised. Of course we found out it was vulnerable and so have Hive now. There are very few on-line services with decades of history. One of my oldest accounts is on last.fm that has logged my music listening for 16 years. They got bought by CBS ages ago, but are still going.

I will keep my Keybase account and monitor how things go.