1 yr. ago • 93%

What are we all using for video chat in 2023?

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?

60 comments

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.

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- Unless it's facetime.
  
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  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.
  
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I usually use Signal.

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Signal

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- 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.
  
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  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.
  
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Signal.

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- ah, I forgot about Signal since I don't like to video chat alone.
  
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  What do you mean? You can group call
  
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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.

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- If something costs nothing then you are the product though. Have you looked into their TOS?
  
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  Jitsi is FOSS and you can self-host it.
  
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  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
  
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Google meet for most people and WhatsApp video with family.

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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).

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- Jitsi +1, so damn easy. Especially compared to emailing out a meeting link in Microsoft teams.
  
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Discord.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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I use WhatsApp with my immediate family, outside of which I just don't do video calls at all

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I avoid video chat as much as possible, but use Jitsi at work.

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Meet, Discord, Signal. Depends on who I'm calling.

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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.

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I was lucky to be able to convince most of my family to use Telegram. Now that they are comfortable I can't get them to try anything else.

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- ooof. monkey's paw, huh?
  
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I really like Telegram generally, including for voice and video. Having native desktop clients too sweetens the deal, even on platforms like Linux. Plus it feels fairly native on each platform, so that makes it easier to get people to switch, versus “this app feels too foreign/clunky on my OS”. Signal is a pretty lousy experience on iOS for example.

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Webex at Work (best endpoints) Portal for family WebRTC based server with STUN for friends

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Teamspeak. I don't need to see you or have my audio pass through discord servers to talk to you. this is my ant hill, i will die on it.

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Discord. Thats what my friends use

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Discord and Messenger yeah I know their awful but I have no other choice my whole family and friends dgaf about privacy and stuff like that

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Usually one of the big three for work: Zoom, Meets or Teams.

Personal it depends, but usually Telegram or Discord.

Of all the services I used so far, the one I hate most is Teams. It has the highest rate of issues and not always the easiest to troubleshoot.

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Before, I used to use Google Duo, now using whatsbapp video calls (quality is poor compared to snapchat video call).

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Teams at work, nothing at home because why would I want to talk to anyone other than my wife

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Nothing except for family calls as we live in different countries

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Discord?

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- idk you tell me
  
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FaceTime

It’s such a rare use case that there’s no point in installing something else for me

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- Ah, I figured there wouldn't be too many FaceTime people in the android community, but here we are.
  
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  I didn’t even realize I was in the android community tbh. Just scrolling local
  
  I really should read more before replying 😂
  
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Teams for work and when I ever need to for personal calls which is really rare, Telegram.

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Usually Meet with my friends and WhatsApp with my family because it's what they're comfortable with

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Teams at work, Facebook Messenger with family, and occasionally Discord with online friends (or with family, if we're having a game night). About half of my family uses iPhones, so they often Facetime each other, but whenever it's a full family call, we know that everyone can use Messenger. I'll occasionally use Duo or whatever it's called to call my dad, and that's about it.

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