I just learned that Signal desktop could be used as an alternative to Zoom for professional meetings, as it has some similar features like screen sharing.
Have you ever used it for meeting with screen sharing on?
If yes, what was your experience, and do you recommend it?
The general response was that I couldn’t protect my privacy and that I am essentially at the mercy of my doctor and the medical software company that she can’t opt out of. I only had one meeting with her over Zoom. Later that month, and before I made my post, Proton Meet officially launched for everyone.
My opinion is that the free version of Proton Meet is too limited for the average person (60 min), and even if I wanted to pay for it, for medical appointment meetings need to be hosted by the doctor, not the patient. I can’t see my doctor agreeing to pay for Proton Meet, but there’s nothing to lose in asking.
Proton Meet is also still new. I have had terrible connections issues with Brave Talk meetings I hosted for work, and it was extremely embarrassing. I don’t want the same thing to happen with my doctor. She is extremely busy and hard to book. My meeting with her will be at least 2 hours and I know that it’s important to her that our meeting be recorded.
Is Signal desktop reliable enough for this?
I’m also curious, what does PG use for their staff meetings?
If you read Privacy Guides meeting minutes, you can learn that it’s Signal. For one who is this active here for so long, I’m surprised you didn’t know.
I hope I get more feedback from people who use Signal desktop for work, but I am definitely considering asking my doctor to use it if screen sharing is possible. It’s that lack of a recording feature that may be difficult.
Signal is not a work product. So a corporate company is unlikely to use it. It’s likely only for people who value their privacy and want to avoid big tech products.
But Signal video conferencing works well and so does Proton Meet. These will only improve going forward. Recording feature and such functionality is more enterprise related so I’m only expecting Proton Meet to have this at some point but nowhere in the near future though.
If I can criticize your post a bit: I feel your line of questions is pedestrian; as they can easily be tested and understood for all that you want to know. Why ask the community for what it can or cannot do? One can easily find out themselves, no? Sorry, perhaps it s cultural difference between us but I don’t understand. You can ignore this paragraph if you want.
You mean it’s not a video conferencing product designed for office businesses.
I get that, but if your business or non-profit organization is very small, I could see people in that context having use for it.
In my case it’s technically not a business, it’s a doctor. And doctors, should be more inclined to accommodate their patients’ needs. Also, if I was the rich client of a business, for example the client of a law firm, I would imagine that if I requested it, they would be inclined to accommodate my privacy needs, especially if I pay them a lot of money.
Wait. So Proton Meet currently doesn’t have the ability to record meetings?
If not, thank you for confirming.
I can appreciate the importance of recording meetings for a lot of businesses, and I guess for telehealth. I will have to ask my doctor how she feels about that.
Proton must understand that not being able to record could be a big hurdle for them. I have little doubt they will eventually incorporate it, but I wonder how long it will take. I don’t see it being a priority for Signal, though. It could provide a new revenue stream if it was a paid feature, but IMO, every privacy business that wants to make money should have an option to pay anonymously. Every new business should have that at launch, IMHO. Still waiting on Proton to get on it.
Consider a self-hosted Nextcloud instance (with Talk, STUN/TURN, and the high performance backend) if you need something private and that can scale to many concurrent users. Jitsi is another option.
That’s a little to technical for me. Besides, my doctor would be the one hosting the meeting so it needs to be easy. I was considering Signal as free option, since the free version of Proton Meet is very limited.
They now require an account via social media so that’s a no-go.
I have played with BraveTalk which is based on Jitsi, but it’s too buggy.
I use Signal mostly on a phone mounted on a little desktop tripod, so I can speak eye to eye in video conferences with some clients. In those conferences, I usually assist with IT administration work via RustDesk or TeamViewer.
I know that was not your question, but I wanted to share my experiences. And I can at least confirm that hour long video conferences via Signal work great.
It is actually better because it is against GDPR on most cases.
For the Signal topic. It is viable for personal usage, but not as an enterprise. I get your point, you want privacy on your calls, but in a corporate world you need compliance and security instead of privacy.
It is against GDPR to have a video conferencing app that can record? How so? Why does Zoom exist then?
Please elaborate.
To be clear, I am talking about recording meetings ethically with the consent of the participants. Many organizations, podcasters and YouTubers, share their Zoom calls online.
Yeah, I will ask my doctor how important is it to her to record our sessions. That will be the determining factor of if we move to Signal or stick to Zoom.
If everyone agrees, then it can be recorded, but again regulations are there. I can’t speak for US or any other non-EU countries but even my company disabled video recording. You need to have data controller and processor and DPO. You need to prove that you have a legimate reason for recording, and you need to clearly get consent from the participants. You are legally forbidden to secretly record a meeting. Also you need to specify how you will record it, where you will save the recording, how long the retention period is and who will have access to it.
My doctor is in the EU and told me she was recording. I also believe that she records all her remote patients. It appears to be vital to her work. It’s one thing to consent to your doctor recording you, but that doesn’t mean you consent to the platform (Zoom) having recordings of you. That’s the problem. Many doctors use tools that don’t protect privacy.
Zoom provides a consent button before the meeting start, and you can deny that consent whenever you want, and your consent automatically revoked once you leave the meeting. Zoom is also required to store data in EU data centers.