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Comment by ViViDboarder | Hacker News Reader

The fact that they hired Alex Stamos and probably just spent a bunch of money on buying Keybase seem like a sign that things are changing.

They prioritized ease of use above all to get adoption before. This is appalling to me, but I believe they are seeing enough pressure to change course. It’s believable to me that they would intend to as they have already captured much of the consumer (non-B2B) market mind share and can afford to invest in this area.

Will I be using it now? Still a no. Maybe I’m time though.

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> The fact that they hired Alex Stamos and ...

Call my cynical, but "hiring" a bunch of infosec celebrities and critics as part-time consultants or contractors should be considered nothing but a (brilliant and silencing) PR move until the day that product updates and analyses reveal otherwise.

> until the day that product updates and analyses reveal otherwise.

The product (and their poor installer practice) has been updated several times in the past few months alone, and each move has made Zoom a more secure product, with the vast majority of the hubbub having been addressed. So are you simply ignoring that, or are you setting your own personal goalposts?

I'm doing neither. I'm pointing out a logical fallacy in the parent comment. Hiring people part-time and buying a company does not, on its own, convey anything about improvements to product quality, security, or the corporate culture of either. I can only infer from your comment that you might think I have some beef or issue with Zoom. I said no such thing.

Sure, but it's not "on its own", it's in the context of the investment in security mentioned by the parent comment.

At this point, I'm confused, and I'm not sure what point you or the other commenter are looking for me to concede. Zoom is paying some security consultants, pushed out some product updates, and bought Keybase, so it's a story book ending?

Just as your comment was aiming to narrowly point out a logical fallacy in the parent comment, I'm pointing out a flaw in your own: I disagree with your claim that investing in security practices is just theater, and that more concrete efforts in the same direction are irrelevant. The concrete efforts are Bayesian evidence that the newer investments are more than theater.

I didn't claim that. I believe in investing in security. I'm a security professional.

You said that those things are theater until the day the product updates. We are beyond the day when that happened. So for it to be a fallacy you have to reject the context in which it was presented, which nobody but you is doing.

It's a SaaS world, baby. Product updates (can) happen everyday. I'm not sure what that proved.

Good catch, that was a misphrasing in my comment. I meant to say _Zoom's_ investments in security, not security investments in general.

I am not looking for you to concede anything. You said nothing has been done to show you that the calculus of their priorities has changed and I listed some things that could possibly show that. It’s up to you if you believe that is significant enough to convince you.

Frankly, I don’t care if it does or not. I was just providing some visible signs of investment.

I didn't see you respond to my comment in this thread unless you post under two different accounts.

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